0 
0 
0 

•    -J 

1 

8 
1 
0 
3 


By 

'wSBPaRfflMwHa^P^fli     T&-9b^^r    ^P^wM^  ^9j?fi 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 


UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 
Donated  in  memory  of 

John  W.    Snvder 

by 

His  Son   and  Daughter 


// 


/^vw-3 


r- 
m 
. 


From  a  drawing  by  Albert    T.  Reid. 


AT  THE 
GRASS  ROOTS 


COMPRISING 

"The  Christmas  of  1883," 

AND   OTHER   VAGRANT  SKETCHES 


BY 

ELMER  &OUSE 

(  Dodd  Gaston) 


WITH 

Cover  Design  and  Frontispiece  by 
ALBERT   T.  REID 


MONOTYPED    BY   CRANE   &    COMPANY, 

TOPEKA,  KANSAS. 

1905 


Copyright  1905, 
BY  ELMER  HOUSE. 


TO  ARTHUR  CAPPER, 

whose  kindly  and  encouraging  indulgence 
gave  these  sketches  inspiration  and  birth. 


FOKEWOKD. 


THIS  trifling  volume  goes  to  its  readers  without 
pretense.  If  the  vagrant  sketches  gathered  between 
its  covers  possess  literary  merit,  I  do  not  suspect  it. 
They  have  no  purpose,  are  aimed  at  no  condition, 
and,  so  far  as  I  know,  point  no  moral.  They  were 
quickened  by  the  spur  of  necessity,  and  represent 
simply  the  daily  striving  for  enough  "copy"  to  fill 
a  given  space.  The  book  itself  is  the  bound  sheaf 
of  many  a  day's  hard  work.  It  was  written  amid 
the  hurry  and  disorder  of  a  newspaper  office,  with 
the  clatter  of  the  linotype  ever  in  my  ears,  and  the 
minute-hand  of  the  clock  moving  always  remorse 
lessly  on  toward  five  in  the  afternoon.  Sometimes 
the  day  was  gray  and  the  hand  of  sorrow  fell  upon 
me  as  I  wrote.  Sometimes  the  sun  shone  through 
the  window  above  my  head  and  the  melody  of  my 
story  ran  into  the  major  scales. 

When  the  impulse  to  gather  them  into  a  bound 
volume  first  came  upon  me  I  thought  to  polish  them 
up  a  bit.  But  they  wouldn't  polish,  and  they  stand 
or  fall  here  practically  as  they  went  to  the  printer  at 
the  close  of  the  day's  work.  And  so,  while  the 
impressions  herein  set  forth  may  lack  fineness  and 
clearness,  they  are  given  as  accurately  as  my  mem- 

(v) 


vi  Foreword. 

ory  kept  them.  The  people  of  whom  I  have  written  I 
knew  intimately  and  well.  Most  of  them  were,  and 
are,  my  close  friends.  In  only  one  or  two  instances 
have  I  taken  the  trouble  to  conceal  their  identity 
under  assumed  names.  In  nearly  every  incident  or 
episode  spread  upon  these  pages  I  had  a  part. 

It  always  seemed  to  me  that  the  humble  folk  I 
knew  in  boyhood  were  as  interesting  as  those  of 
more  pretentious  circumstance  with  whom  my  lot 
has  fallen  in  later  years.  I  think  they  gathered  from 
their  simple  diversions  a  keener  sense  of  enjoyment 
than  do  those  who  set  themselves  above  them.  I 
know  their  expression  of  emotion  was  more  natural, 
their  lives  less  repressed  and  less  hedged  in  by  arti 
ficial  limitations.  And  so  I  have  placed  a  few  of 
them  in  brief  review  upon  the  printed  page.  Here 
is  the  hope  that  they  may  hold  for  you  the  same  de 
gree  of  interest  they  have  held  for  me. 

ELMER  HOUSE. 
TOPEKA,  December  I,  1905. 


CONTENTS. 


Page. 

THE  CHRISTMAS  OF  1883, 9 

"SOCIETY"  AT  ROWDEN'S  FORD, 20 

A  PASSING  GLANCE  AT  'SQUIRE  HARMON, 25 

THE  UPLIFT  AT  DOANE, 30 

THE  NEIGHBORHOOD  FIDDLER, 37 

THE  NEIGHBORHOOD'S  GAYER  SIDE, 41 

IN  MEMORY  OF  AN  ORNERY  PUP, 46 

THE  PRINCESS  ENTERS, 50 

THE  LURE  OF  THE  CIRCUS, 56 

WHEN  FLORA  DIED, 62 

THE  GHOST  AT  SCOTT'S  CHURCH, 65 

BACK  AT  GRIGSBY'S  STATION, 72 

GOING  BACK  TO  GRANDMOTHER'S, 78 

THE  PASSING  OF  "MUSKOGEE  RED," 84 

AN  APOSTROPHE  TO  THE  RABBIT, 89 

THE  SMARTEST  BOY  IN  SCHOOL,      93 

THE  OLD  DISTRICT  JUDGE, 97 

THE  OPOLIS  DAILY  SUN, 101 


viii  Contents. 

Page. 

BROTHER  BILL, 113 

HER  FIRST  REAL  TRAGEDY 117 

THE  PRINCE  BUSINESS, 119 

MY  FRIEND  THE  BOY, 121 

THE  GIRL  IN  "GoooLY-Goo," 128 

A  PILGRIMAGE  INTO  THE  PAST, 133 

THE  TAKING  DOWN  OF  HESTON, 136 

WHEN  A  MAN  is  WORTHLESS, 143 

ON  LICKING  NICK   HARTLEY, 146 


THE   CHRISTMAS   OF   1883. 

The  first  Christmas  that  stamped  itself 
cleanly  on  my  memory  was  that  of  1883. 
It  is  not  that  I  am  not  old  enough  to  re 
member  Christmas  days  that  preceded  it, 
but  because  the  circumstances  surround 
ing  the  Christmas  of  1883  were  so  new 
and  unusual  that  they  left  an  impression 
on  my  boyish  mind. 

We  had  come  to  Kansas  in  a  covered 
wagon  two  or  three  months  previously, 
from  a  comfortable  home  in  a  prosperous 
and  settled  community  of  an  eastern  state. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  house  into  which 
we  moved.  The  advance  agent  of  the 
plow  and  mowing-machine  wrho  home- 
steaded  the  claim  had  built  originally  a 
two -room  dwelling.  Later  on  he  put  a 
mortgage  on  the  claim  and  added  a  shed 
room  on  the  south.  With  the  advent  of 
the  next  year's  baby  he  put  on  a  second 
mortgage  and  added  a  shed  room  on  the 
west. 


10  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

A  peculiarity  of  the  shed  room  on  the 
west  was  that  it  was  higher  than  the  orig 
inal  house,  and  the  roof  having  but  one 
slope,  it  presented  a  most  grotesque  ap 
pearance.  In  the  front  door  of  the  house 
some  jackleg  carpenter,  probably  the 
homesteader  himself,  had  cut  a  hole  and 
into  the  hole  he  had  nailed  an  old-fash 
ioned  window-sash  containing  three  small 
panes  of  glass.  I  was  too  young  to  know 
anything  about  artistic  effect,  but  that 
window-sash  in  the  front  door  always 
jarred  on  me,  and  when,  a  year  or  two 
later,  a  new  house  was  built,  I  chopped 
the  door  into  kindling  with  fiendish  glee. 

The  schoolhouse  was  a  mile  and  a  half 
away  across  the  prairie.  There  were  no 
fences  worth  mentioning  and  the  road 
zigzagged  across  the  prairie  at  the  con 
venience  of  the  person  who  happened 
to  be  using  it  at  the  time.  I  started  to 
school  the  Monday  after  we  got  settled 
in  our  new  home,  and  by  the  time  Christ 
mas  came  round  I  was  established  in  the 


The  Christmas  of  1883.  1 1 

community.  Which  is  to  say  that  I  had 
been  whipped  by  the  teacher,  had  fallen 
in  love  with  a  girl,  and  had  stood  on  the 
schoolhouse  grounds  with  a  chip  on  my 
shoulder  for  twenty  minutes  one  day 
during  the  noon  hour,  daring  anybody 
of  my  size  to  knock  it  off.  I  also  had  an 
engagement  to  fight  Bill  Fought,  a  neigh 
bor  boy,  the  first  time  we  got  far  enough 
out  of  sight  of  the  teacher  and  our  re 
spective  fathers  to  insure  an  unlimited 
round  go.  We  finally  fought  at  the  skat- 
ing-pond  a  few  weeks  later,  and  Bill  made 
a  doormat  of  me.  Two  or  three  years 
later,  having  grown  very  rapidly  mean 
while,  I  evened  things  up  by  whipping 
both  Bill  and  his  twin  brother,  Grant,  at 
one  sitting. 

There  were  no  churches  in  the  imme 
diate  vicinity,  and  the  Christmas  tree 
was  given  at  the  schoolhouse.  Preceding 
the  distribution  of  presents  there  was  a 
literary  program  by  the  pupils  of  the 
school  and  other  young  people  of  the 


At  the  Grass  Roots. 


neighborhood.  I  was  down  to  "speak  a 
piece."  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever 
appeared  on  a  literary  program,  and  the 
thing  was  of  tremendous  moment  to  me. 

They  tried  to  get  me  to  speak  a  "Dear 
Little  Willie"  sort  of  selection,  but  I 
wouldn't  stand  for  it.  I  had  just  begun 
to  dig  into  Shakespeare,  Pilgrim's  Prog 
ress  and  other  literature  of  the  heavy 
weight  class,  and  it's  a  wonder  I  didn't 
insist  on  reciting  Hamlet's  Soliloquy. 
But  the  thing  I  had  set  my  heart  on  was 
"The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  and 
they  finally  let  me  have  my  way. 

An  enormous  crowd  came  to  the 
Christmas  tree,  and  the  schoolhouse 
was  packed  and  jammed  with  people 
when  the  preliminaries  began.  Up  to 
that  time  I  had  been  rather  buoyant  over 
the  thought  that  I  was  to  recite,  but  when 
quiet  settled  down  upon  the  crowd  my 
nerve  deserted  me  and  I  fell  into  a  blue 
funk.  I  would  have  gone  home  leaving 
the  "Light  Brigade  "  to  its  fate,  but  I  had 


The  Christmas  of  1883.  13 

not  the  courage  even  to  slink  from  the 
schoolhouse.  And  so  with  the  heavy 
hand  of  woe  upon  my  soul,  and  the  palsy 
of  fright  benumbing  my  limbs,  I  sat  wait 
ing  for  my  turn  to  speak. 

Finally,  after  what  seemed  hours  to  me, 
although  it  was  probably  not  more  than 
ten  minutes,  since  I  was  the  third  per 
former  on  the  program,  I  heard  my 
name  called  and  managed  to  make  my 
way  to  the  platform,  although  I  never  had 
any  subsequent  recollection  of  the  inci 
dents  attending  the  journey.  And  in  a 
voice  which  sounded  to  me  as  though 
it  were  coming  out  of  Kincade's  corn 
field  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away,  I  started 
the  "Light  Brigade"  into  action.  I 
halted  it  almost  immediately  in  the  teeth 
of  a  murderous  fire.  For  I  forgot  the 
thing  and  stood  there  gibbering  at  the 
crowd  without  being  able  to  recall  a  sin 
gle  word.  The  horror,  the  chagrin  and 
the  shame  of  that  moment  are  still  real 
to  me,  although  it  happened  more  than 


14  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

twenty  years  ago.  At  last  I  caught 
sight  of  the  teacher  and  asked  him  to 
excuse  me,  although  in  the  light  of  ma- 
turer  years  and  better  judgment  I  can 
not  see  what  the  teacher  had  to  do  with 
it.  The  teacher,  however,  expressed  the 
opinion  that  I  was  excusable,  and  I  got 
down  from  the  improvised  platform  some 
how  and  buried  my  ignominy  and  shame 
in  the  crowd.  I  am  not  much  of  a  mili 
tary  tactician,  but  I  know  I  left  the 
"Light  Brigade"  in  bad  shape  to  resist 
the  attack  of  an  enemy,  and  I  apologize 
for  it. 

Most  Christmas  trees  nowadays  get 
along  with  the  assistance  of  a  Santa 
Claus,  but  that  one  had  not  only  a  Santa 
Claus,  but  a  Kriss  Kringle  as  well.  In 
later  years  I  have  pondered  over  the 
Kriss  Kringle  business  a  good  deal,  but 
never  found  out  who  he  \vas  or  why  he 
was  mixed  up  with  that  Christmas  tree. 
It  was  considered  necessary  that  both 
Santa  Claus  and  Kriss  Kringle  should 


The  Christmas  of  1883.  15 

be  humorists  of  a  high  order,  to  the  end 
that  they  might  make  the  crowd  roar 
with  quips  and  jests  and  jokes.  So  there 
was  considerable  rivalry  between  neigh 
boring  communities  to  secure  high- 
class  humorists  for  the  occasion,  and  if 
one  had  the  reputation  of  being  funny  he 
was  often  spoken  for  months  ahead.  Our 
Santa  Claus  that  year  was  Sam  Turner, 
and  Jim  Willison  was  the  Kriss  Kringle. 
They  were  supposed  to  be  about  the  best 
in  the  business,  and  they  had  the  crowd 
going  from  the  start.  I  will  admit  that 
they  tickled  me  nearly  to  death.  But  I 
knew  them  both  very  well  in  after  years, 
and  never  heard  either  say  anything  par 
ticularly  funny. 

Rivalry  between  neighboring  commu 
nities  did  not  halt  with  the  selection  of 
the  humorists  who  served  the  occasion. 
Insofar  as  the  Doane  and  Dodd  districts 
were  concerned— the  Dodd  district  ad 
joined  the  Doane  on  the  east — it  extended 
to  the  value  of  the  presents  on  the  tree. 


16  At  the  Grass  Roots. 


The  Doane  folk  were  mostly  from  New 
York  and  Massachusetts,  and  they  looked 
down  upon  the  people  of  the  Dodd  neigh 
borhood,  who  had  moved  in  from  Indiana 
and  Illinois.  The  Dodd  folk  reciprocated 
the  feeling.  It  was  probably  true  that 
the  Doane  neighborhood  had  more  edu 
cation  and  culture  than  its  neighbor  on 
the  east,  but  the  Dodd  district  people  had 
more  money  and  fewer  mortgages  on 
their  land. 

It  was  generally  admitted  that  so  far 
as  the  Christmas  of  1883  was  concerned, 
the  Dodd  tree  won  the  pennant.  For 
upon  its  branches,  in  addition  to  the 
usual  assortment  of  handkerchiefs,  pho 
tograph  albums,  earmuffs,  pocketbooks, 
nubias,  mittens,  pocket-knives,  popcorn 
and  candy,  there  hung  also  a  bureau  and 
a  sewing-machine.  The  Doane  people 
had  to  admit  they  were  beaten,  as  no 
present  on  their  tree  cost  more  than  $5, 
but  they  claimed  Dodd  had  taken  an  un 
fair  advantage,  inasmuch  as  the  district 


The  Christmas  of  1883.  17 

had  combined  with  the  Olive  Branch 
neighborhood  in  giving  the  tree. 

The  event  of  the  evening  at  Doane 
which  did  most  to  stimulate  gossip  was 
extraneous  in  its  nature.  Herschel 
Meeker,  one  of  the  neighborhood  beaus, 
brought  Ella  Talbott  to  the  schoolhouse 
in  a  top  buggy.  It  was  the  first  top 
buggy  in  the  neighborhood,  and  the  in 
cident  created  a  great  deal  of  comment 
both  at  the  tree  and  afterward.  The  at 
titude  of  the  neighborhood  toward  the 
innovation  is  best  shown  by  the  remark 
of  a  neighbor  woman  who  called  on 
mother  a  few  days  afterward.  She  said 
she'd  "bet  anything  that  Joe  Meeker 
mortgaged  his  claim  to  bu}^  Herschel  that 
buggy." 

I  did  not  go  home  with  the  family  after 
the  tree.  I  had  heard  there  was  to  be  a 
dance  in  the  schoolhouse,  and  under  the 
pretense  of  cutting  across  the  prairie  and 
getting  the  fires  started  before  the  fam 
ily  reached  home,  I  eluded  father  and 


18  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

sneaked  back  to  watch  the  dance.  I 
didn't  get  home  until  two  o'clock.  What 
happened  to  me  next  day  is  not  a  matter 
for  extended  reference.  I  had  never  be 
fore  seen  a  dance,  and  I  was  greatly  in 
terested.  Our  family  was  made  up  of 
strict  Methodists,  who  believed  dancing 
to  be  a  device  of  the  devil. 

A  good  many  people  stayed  for  the 
dance.  Everybody  danced  the  qua 
drilles,  but  only  a  few  could  schottische, 
and  the  waltzing  was  confined  to  one 
couple.  When  the  orchestra  played  a 
waltz — the  orchestra  was  a  violin  and  a 
bull  fiddle — everybody  sat  back  and 
watched  this  highly  accomplished  cou 
ple.  They  were  strangers,  apparently, 
and  I  never  found  out  who  they  were. 

The  dance  was  given  for  the  benefit  of 
the  library  association,  and  netted  six 
dollars.  Between  periods  of  drying 
peaches  and  making  soft  soap  the  women 
were  trying  to  get  together  enough  money 
to  buy  a  library.  They  were  always  giv- 


The  Christmas  of  1883.  19 

ing  socials  in  summer  and  plays  at  the 
schoolhouse  in  winter  for  the  benefit  of 
the  library — admission  ten  cents.  A 
good  many  years  later  the  library  asso 
ciation  broke  up,  so  many  of  the  members 
having  either  died  or  moved  away  that  it 
was  no  longer  possible  to  maintain  an 
interest  in  the  organization.  When  it 
disbanded  there  was  $18  in  the  treasury. 


"SOCIETY"  AT  ROWDEN'S 
FORD. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  went  a  good  deal 
to  dances  at  Rowden's  Ford.  The  Ford 
was  the  eastern  outlet  of  the  community 
which  lived  in  the  big  bend  of  the  river, 
and  as  it  brought  the  church,  the  drug 
store,  the  circus  and  the  Fourth  of  July 
celebration  four  miles  nearer,  it  had  a 
considerable  patronage  when  the  water  in 
the  river  was  low.  The  Rowden's  Ford- 
ers  were  a  rather  careless  lot,  much  given 
to  coon-hunting  by  night  and  horse-trad 
ing  by  day.  In  the  Doane  neighborhood 
it  wasn't  considered  very  good  form  to 
go  to  the  Rowden's  Ford  functions.  There 
was  too  much  fist-fighting  and  too  much 
easy  familiarity  with  the  Demon  Rum  to 
make  the  locality  popular  with  staid  peo 
ple.  Very  few  of  the  Doane  girls  ever 
went  to  Rowden's  Ford.  But  most  of 
the  boys  drifted  into  the  habit  in  time. 

(20) 


"Society"  at  Rowden's  Ford.         21 

The  leader  of  society  at  Rowden's  Ford 
was  the  Moses  family.  The  Moseses  usu 
ally  gave  a  dance  once  a  week  in  winter. 
In  summer  the  intervals  between  the 
"rags,"  as  they  were  derisively  called  in 
the  Doane  neighborhood,  were  longer.  It 
wasn't  much  trouble  for  the  Moses  family 
to  entertain.  All  they  had  to  do  was  to 
move  the  kitchen  chairs  into  the  "front" 
room  and  the  table  and  cupboard  out 
into  the  back  yard.  The  decorative  ef 
fect  was  completed  by  placing  a  chair  for 
the  fiddler  on  top  of  the  cook-stove. 
The  Moses  family  could  arrange  to  give 
a  party  in  fifteen  minutes  any  time. 

The  dances  at  Rowden's  Ford  usually 
lasted  from  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening 
until  four  or  five  o'clock  the  next  morn 
ing.  Sometimes  we  stayed  till  sunrise  if 
no  hard  feelings  had  been  engendered  and 
the  necessity  of  stopping  the  dance  to 
keep  down  a  fight  did  not  arise.  Those 
who  participated  were  charged  25  cents 
apiece.  When  one  paid  his  money  he 


22  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

received  a  number,  and  when  dancing 
began  the  numbers  were  called  out  four 
at  a  time  in  rotation.  When  one's  num 
ber  was  called  he  hunted  up  a  partner 
and  took  his  place  on  the  floor.  If  a 
good  many  numbers  were  sold  one  did 
not  get  to  dance  very  often,  but  as  he 
could  always  step  outdoors  and  stir  up 
a  fight  in  the  intervals  between  dances, 
nobody  suffered  from  ennui. 

Nothing  but  square  dancing  was  in 
dulged  in  at  Rowden's  Ford.  A  girl  who 
knew  how  to  waltz  was  thought  to  be 
' '  stuck  up ' '  and  the  least  familiarity  with 
the  round  dance  subjected  a  man  to  a 
good  deal  of  suspicion.  One  of  the  fea 
tures  of  the  parties  at  the  Ford  was  the 
jig-dancing  of  Lee  Rowden.  Lee  always 
wore  a  pair  of  fine  boots  with  very  small 
high  heels,  into  the  tops  of  which  he 
tucked  his  trousers.  He  was  a  very 
slender,  graceful  man,  and  when  called 
upon  invariably  responded  without  much 
urging.  He  was  also  in  great  demand  for 


''Society"  at  Row  dens  Ford.         23 

calling  the  figures  of  the  quadrilles,  and 
received  his  number  free  for  "calling" 
half  the  dances.  As  Lee  was  a  married 
man  with  a  wife  and  several  children, 
this  arrangement  was  a  very  good  one, 
financially,  for  him. 

At  Rowden's  Ford  the  three -foot  vein 
of  trouble  lay  very  near  to  the  surface  of 
the  ground,  and  one  had  to  be  very  care 
ful  lest  he  disturb  it.  We  boys  from 
adjoining  neighborhoods  always  figured 
to  get  our  numbers  in  the  same  set  so 
that  we  would  be  near  each  other  if  the 
lode  were  uncovered,  and  we  danced  with 
our  coats  off,  no  matter  what  the  mercury 
was  doing  outside.  I  was  not  very  pop 
ular  at  Rowden's  Ford.  The  real  aris 
tocrats  of  the  community — the  Moseses, 
the  Rowdens  and  the  Braziers — liked  me 
first-rate,  and  are  still  my  warm  friends. 
But  the  others  were  always  suspicious  of 
me  because  I  habitually  wore  a  derby  hat, 
and  because  some  of  my  enemies  had 
circulated  the  report  that  I  could  schot- 
tische. 


24  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

The  last  party  I  attended  at  Rowden's 
Ford  turned  out  unpleasantly,  and  I 
never  went  back.  That  night  supper  was 
served  to  the  guests  in  the  bedroom  up 
stairs.  The  supper  was  25  cents  extra, 
but  we  Doane  boys  all  partook  of  it. 
One  of  the  boys  who  had  recently  moved 
into  the  community  from  Iowa,  and  who 
was  unaccustomed  to  the  ways  of  the 
Ford,  went  up  to  supper  a  little  late  and 
could  find  nothing  to  eat  but  a  little  cold 
rice  in  a  teacup.  He  must  have  known 
that  it  was  only  an  oversight,  but  he  had 
the  bad  taste  to  mention  it  to  the  niece 
of  the  hostess  when  he  returned  to  the 
dancing-floor.  I  was  out  of  doors  when 
the  thing  started,  and  got  off  with  one 
cut  and  a  few  bruises,  but  we  had  to  lead 
him  home. 


A  PASSING  GLANCE  AT 'SQUIRE 
HARMON. 

Andrew  Jackson  Harmon  was  one  of 
the  "characters"  of  our  neighborhood. 
Harmon  was  a  New-Yorker  by  birth  and 
a  Democrat  by  profession,  who  farmed  a 
little  as  a  side  line.  He  put  in  most  of 
his  time  talking  politics,  however,  and 
if  the  neighbors  were  all  busy  he  mounted 
his  horse  and  rode  until  he  found  a  man 
idle  enough  to  listen  to  him.  It  was  one 
of  the  neighborhood  "stories"  that  he 
was  once  seen  sixteen  miles  from  home 
at  the  sunset  of  a  bitter  winter's  day  en 
gaged  in  a  hot  discussion  of  the  tariff 
with  a  man  who  was  splitting  wood  by 
the  roadside.  The  man  was  doing  his 
evening  "chores"  and  Harmon  had  rid 
den  up  and  started  an  argument. 

Harmon  was  a  little  sawed-off  man  with 
whiskers  like  General  Grant's.  He  wore 
habitually  a  frock  coat,  and,  being  short 

(25) 


26  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

in  stature,  the  tail  of  it  flapped  against  his 
legs  midway  between  his  knees  and  his 
ankles.  He  had  a  good  frock  coat  in 
in  which  he  arrayed  himself  for  "liter- 
aries,"  dances,  spelling-schools,  county 
conventions,  and  on  his  trips  afield. 
He  had  an  old  and  rusty  garment  of 
the  same  length  and  contour  which  he 
wore  about  his  work  on  the  farm.  But, 
summer  or  winter,  no  day  or  occasion 
which  demanded  a  coat  caught  him 
garbed  in  anything  other  than  a  frock. 
Another  sartorial  idiosyncrasy  which  dis 
tinguished  Harmon  from  his  associates 
was  that  when  he  wore  a  white  or,  in  the 
local  vernacular,  a  "boiled"  shirt,  he 
also  wore  cuffs  with  it.  In  Kansas  in  the 
early  eighties  it  was  not  difficult  to  find 
a  sovereign  who  owned  a  white  shirt,  but 
those  who  owned  both  shirt  and  cuffs 
were  indeed  rare  enough. 

I  have  often  thought  that  had  Harmon 
been  a  Republican  he  would  have  gone 
to  Congress.  Certainly,  I  never  heard  a 


'Squire  Harmon.  27 

more  eloquent  public  speaker.  He  was 
fairly  well  educated,  exceedingly  well  in 
formed,  and  had  a  command  of  good 
English  that  was  marvelous.  He  never 
made  a  speech,  no  matter  what  the  sub 
ject,  without  referring  to  Thomas  Jef 
ferson,  Andrew  Jackson  and  John  C. 
Calhoun.  Occasionally  he  referred  to 
Daniel  Webster,  but  Webster  having  been 
a  Whig,  Harmon  was  a  little  chary  about 
pushing  him  to  the  front. 

Being  a  Democrat,  and  disliked  not 
only  by  the  Republicans  but  by  many 
of  his  own  party  as  well,  Harmon  never 
achieved  much  political  distinction. 
Once  his  party  ran  him  for  justice  of  the 
peace,  but  he  was  beaten  overwhelm 
ingly,  and  his  services  in  an  official  ca 
pacity  were  restricted  to  one  term  as 
clerk  of  the  school  board  of  the  district 
in  which  he  lived.  As  a  delicate  recog 
nition  of  the  fact  that  he  had  once  run 
for  justice  of  the  peace,  the  neighbors 
always  called  him  "  'Squire"  to  his  face, 


28  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

although  behind  his  back  they  referred 
to  him  as  "Jack"  or  "Old  Jack." 

Harmon  was  the  most  arrant  coward 
I  have  ever  known.  Being  forever  in  a 
political  discussion,  he  was  likewise  al 
ways  in  a  quarrel  with  some  one.  As  he 
was  exceedingly  abusive  and  insulting  in 
his  arguments,  he  was  always  tempting 
some  partisan  of  the  opposite  faith  to 
chastise  him.  But  he  always  managed 
somehow  to  avoid  a  personal  encounter. 
He  would  begin  by  putting  up  a  strong 
bluff,  and  if  that  failed  to  stop  his  ad 
versary  and  damage  to  his  features 
seemed  imminent,  he  would  pose  ma 
jestically  and  say:  "I  have  heart  dis 
ease.  The  doctors  say  I  can  live  no  more 
than  three  years  at  most.  Strike  me  at 
your  peril."  That  usually  stopped  the 
man  he  had  insulted.  If  it  didn't,  Har 
mon  slunk  away  like  a  whipped  puppy. 
Although  I  saw  him  probably  in  fifty 
quarrels  where  a  personal  encounter 
seemed  likely,  I  never  knew  a  man  to  lay 
a  finger  on  him. 


'Squire  Harmon.  29 

Harmon  had  one  boy,  upon  whom  his 
hopes  centered.  The  boy  was  smart  and 
made  almost  as  good  a  speech  as  his 
father.  The  father's  dream  was  to  make 
a  statesman  of  the  son,  and  he  bought  a 
lot  of  law  books  and  set  him  at  the  task 
of  reading  law.  But  when  the  boy  finally 
left  home  he  went  to  town  and  opened  a 
billiard  hall.  The  father  never  seemed 
the  same  afterward :  the  apostasy  of  the 
boy  broke  his  spirit  and  his  heart. 


THE   UPLIFT   AT   DOANE. 

We  lived  in  what  was  known  locally  as 
the  Doane  neighborhood.  It  took  its 
name  from  the  schoolhouse,  which  had 
been  built  on  the  Doane  farm.  The  fam 
ily  had  moved  away  several  years  before, 
but  the  name  stuck  and  still  sticks,  al 
though  it  must  be  all  of  thirty  years  since 
the  last  Doane  left  the  community. 

The  uplift  at  Doane  rested  pretty  heav 
ily  on  a  Sunday-school  library  sent  out 
from  Massachusetts  some  years  previous 
to  the  time  of  this  chronicle,  and  the 
Doane  Literary  and  Debating  Society. 
The  neighborhood  was  famous  locally  for 
its  literary  and  debating  society,  which 
met  in  the  schoolhouse  every  Friday  night 
from  October  to  April.  In  those  days 
pretty  nearly  every  country  school  district 
in  Kansas  had  its  "literary,"  but  none 
round  about  brought  out  such  a  famous 
array  of'  debaters  or  such  literary  talent 
as  gathered  at  Doane. 

(30) 


The  Uplift  at  Doane.  31 

Being  a  member  of  the  "literary"  was 
optional  with  those  who  attended.  The 
membership  fee  was  five  cents,  but  no 
body  was  barred  from  participation  in 
the  debate  or  literary  program.  Only 
members,  however,  could  vote  at  the 
election  of  officers,  or  on  matters  affecting 
the  society  officially.  The  first  office  I 
ever  held  was  that  of  treasurer  of  the 
Doane  "literary,"  and  occasionally,  when 
the  society  was  flush,  I  had  as  much  as 
sixty  cents  in  my  possession.  The  treas 
urer  was  also  the  purchasing  agent  of  the 
society,  and  during  my  term  of  office  I 
bought  all  the  kerosene  used  and  the 
lamp  chimneys  necessary  to  replace  those 
broken  at  the  meetings.  Afterward  I 
worked  up  to  the  position  of  secretary, 
and  was  editor  of  the  paper  one  term 
when  I  was  fourteen.  In  fact,  the  first 
editorial  work  I  ever  did  was  on  the 
Doane  Pulverizer,  a  local  newspaper 
printed  on  foolscap  and  issued  every  two 
weeks.  It  was  considered  too  great  a 


32  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

mental  strain  on  the  editor  to  issue  the 
paper  every  week. 

At  the  meetings  of  the  society  the  lit 
erary  program  was  always  given  before 
the  debate.  Between  the  two  there  was 
a  recess  of  fifteen  minutes,  presumably  to 
give  the  audience  opportunity  to  get 
over  the  former.  The  literary  program 
was  made  up  of  music,  recitations,  which 
were  called  declamations  then,  select 
readings,  and  an  occasional  essay.  There 
was  only  one  encyclopedia  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  and  as  the  owner  loaned  the 
volumes  grudgingly,  it  was  pretty  hard 
to  write  an  essay.  Usually  there  were 
more  select  readings  on  the  program 
than  any  thing  else,  because  it  was  a  great 
deal  easier  to  read  a  piece  than  it  was  to 
commit  one  to  memory.  When  one  did 
go  to  the  trouble  of  committing  some 
thing  to  memory  he  worked  it  pretty 
hard.  I  used  to  recite  "Barbara  Friet- 
chie"  an  average  of  three  times  every 
winter,  working  it  in  alternate  shifts 


The  Uplift  at  Doane.  33 

with  "Darius  Green"  and  "The  Mid 
night  Ride  of  Paul  Revere."  When  one 
was  on  the  program  and  had  failed  to 
prepare  anything,  the  polite  form  of  get 
ting  out  of  it  was  to  arise  in  his  seat, 
make  a  bow  to  the  president  and  say 
"Not  prepared"  in  a  soothing  tone  of 
voice. 

During  the  recess  the  secretary  made 
out  the  program  for  the  next  meeting, 
and  it  was  read  immediately  preceding 
the  debate.  When  the  debate  came  on, 
the  older  men  had  their  innings.  The 
questions  discussed  were  mostly  of  na 
tional  import,  and  we  often  settled  things 
at  Doane  before  Congress  had  a  chance 
at  them.  Once  a  month  an  easy  subject 
was  selected  and  the  boys  were  given  a 
chance  at  it.  My  first  debating  was  done 
on  the  question  as  to  whether  art  is  more 
beautiful  to  the  eye  than  nature.  I  had 
the  negative  and  lost,  all  three  of  the 
judges  being  against  me.  I  have  found 
in  later  years  that  the  judges  were  right : 


34  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

a  good  many  things  in  nature  are  greatly 
improved  by  the  application  of  a  little 
art.  The  art  and  nature  question  was  a 
standard  subject  for  discussion.  They 
always  started  beginners  on  it,  and  al 
lowed  them  to  work  gradually  up  to  the 
tariff  and  woman  suffrage. 

The  judges  of  the  debate  were  usually 
chosen  from  among  the  men  in  the  neigh 
borhood  who  were  not  smart  enough  to 
be  debaters.  John  Hance  was  nearly 
always  a  judge,  although  John's  knowl 
edge  of  things  with  which  the  world  was 
concerned  began  and  ended  with  his  abil 
ity  to  ' '  top  out ' '  a  wheat-stack  so  that  it 
would  shed  the  rain.  Occasionally,  dis 
tinguished  visitors  came  from  town  to 
attend  the  "literary":  that  is  to  say, 
men  who  expected  to  be  candidates  for 
county  office  at  the  next  election.  Such 
visitors  were  always  treated  with  rare 
consideration.  They  were  invited  to  de 
bate,  and  permitted  to  choose  the  side  of 
the  question  upon  which  they  desired  to 


The  Uplift  at  Doane.  35 

talk.  If  they  did  not  care  to  debate  they 
were  solicited  to  act  as  judges.  The 
Doane  idea  of  hospitality  and  considera 
tion  was  to  invite  visitors  to  take  part 
in  the  "literary." 

The  paper  was  always  made  the  last 
number  on  the  program.  The  crowd  was 
never  much  interested  in  the  debate,  and 
as  the  paper,  which  was  always  extremely 
personal,  and  which  dealt  chiefly  with 
the  love  affairs  of  the  young  people  of 
the  neighborhood,  was  the  most  inter 
esting  feature,  it  was  kept  until  the  last 
in  order  that  the  talkers  might  not  be 
embarrassed  by  having  the  audience  melt 
away  at  an  inopportune  moment.  Edit 
ing  the  paper  was  hard  work.  It  con 
sisted  principally  in  finding  rhymes  which 
would  bring  the  name  of  every  young 
man  in  the  neighborhood  in  close  juxta 
position  with  that  of  some  girl. 

The  time  covered  in  this  chronicle  was 
of  a  date  written  much  more  frequently 
twenty  years  ago  than  at  any  subsequent 


36  At  the  Grass  Roots. 


time.  But  reading  the  local  paper  not 
so  long  ago  I  noticed  that  a  literary  so 
ciety  to  meet  on  Friday  nights  during  the 
winter  had  been  organized  at  the  Doane 
schoolhouse. 


THE  NEIGHBORHOOD  FIDDLER. 

Morey  Aldrich  was  the  neighborhood 
fiddler.  Aldrich's  orchestra,  which  con 
sisted  of  a  violin  and  a  "bull"  fiddle, 
played  at  nearly  all  of  the  big  dances  in 
the  country  round  about.  One  could 
hire  Aldrich's  orchestra  for  $3,  and  in 
addition  to  furnishing  the  music  Aldrich 
"called  off"  the  figures  in  the  square 
dances  without  extra  charge.  Other  fid 
dlers  could  be  hired  more  cheaply.  Music 
might  be  had  for  as  little  as  $1.50  an 
evening,  but  Aldrich  was  considered  the 
best  of  the  lot  and  his  orchestra  played 
for  all  of  the  swell  dances. 

I  have  referred  to  Aldrich  as  a  fiddler, 
the  title  by  which  he  was  known  in  the 
neighborhood.  I  did  not  know  then,  but 
I  know  now,  that  the  man  was  an  artist, 
a  violinist  of  rare  skill  and  wonderful 
temperament.  I  had  been  raised  in  the 
Methodist  church,  and  about  the  only 

(37) 


38  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

music  with  which  I  was  familiar  were  the 
long-meter  hymns  of  that  sect.  And  yet 
I  can  still  recall  my  surging  emotion  and 
the  tugging  at  my  heartstrings  which 
inevitably  occurred  when  Aldrich,  on  the 
occasion  of  a  social  evening,  discarded 
dance  music  and  played  what  he  chose. 
The  names  of  Schubert,  Strauss  and 
others  of  the  masters  whose  music  Al 
drich  played  when  he  sought  relaxation 
meant  nothing  to  me  then.  I  only  knew 
they  were  the  signal  for  the  onslaught  of 
a  torrent  of  varying  moods  and  emotions. 
But  I  know  now  that  I  was  listening  to 
a  master  of  the  bow. 

Aldrich  is  long  since  dead.  Even  then 
his  hair  and  beard  were  white,  and  he 
must  have  been  a  long  way  down  the  hill 
on  the  other  side  of  fifty.  He  was  a 
Massachusetts  man,  and  I  have  often 
wondered  what  strange  upheaval  up 
rooted  him  from  his  native  soil  and  set 
him  down  on  a  Kansas  prairie.  He 
farmed  a  little  in  a  dilettante  sort  of 


The  Neighborhood  Fiddler.          39 

way,  and  had  a  few  pupils  in  music— 
some  on  the  organ,  a  few  on  the  violin, 
and  occasionally  one  in  vocal  methods. 
But  there  was  a  great  deal  stronger  de 
mand  for  bread  and  butter  in  Kansas 
during  those  years  than  there  was  for 
music,  and  the  real  business  of  his  life 
was  playing  for  country  dances. 

The  fiddler's  farming  was  the  joke  of 
the  community.  He  had  a  strange  an 
tipathy  for,  or  fear  of,  a  horse,  and  would 
not  have  one  on  his  farm.  He  put  in 
and  tended  his  crops  with  a  hoe  and  gath 
ered  them  in  a  wheelbarrow.  He  would 
not  even  ride  behind  a  horse  if  he  could 
help  it,  and  invariably  walked  to  the 
dances  at  which  he  played.  Some  of 
them  were  held  as  far  away  as  ten  miles 
from  his  home,  and  one  often  saw  him 
setting  out  as  early  as  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  for  the  dance  at  which  he  was 
to  play  that  night.  After  the  dance  he 
walked  back  home  again,  although  at 
many  of  the  festal  affairs  in  which  he 


40  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

participated  the  merrymaking  ended  co 
incident  with  the  rising  sun. 

Aldrich's  one  weakness,  a  not  uncom 
mon  one,  by  the  way,  was  his  belief  that 
he  could  sing.  He  knew  music  thor 
oughly  and  could  play  seven  or  eight 
different  instruments,  but  he  had  not  the 
slightest  suggestion  of  voice  considered 
from  the  standpoint  of  either  quantity 
or  quality.  But  he  always  sang  at  public 
entertainments,  and  invariably  chose  the 
"Marseillaise"  as  his  selection.  In  the 
five  or  six  years  I  knew  him  intimately 
I  heard  him  sing  the  "Marseillaise"  not 
fewer  than  thirty  times. 

His  was  one  of  the  strange,  unusual 
types  in  the  incongruous  mass  which  peo 
pled  Kansas  in  its  earlier  days.  A  gentle, 
kindly  man  with  the  soul  of  an  artist 
and  the  touch  of  a  master,  his  later  years 
were  as  utterly  lost  as  is  the  novice  at 
sea  in  an  open  boat. 


THE  NEIGHBORHOOD'S  GAYER 
SIDE. 

Society  in  our  neighborhood  was  di 
vided  into  two  factions — those  who 
danced  and  those  who  didn't.  The  danc 
ing  faction  was  the  larger,  but  the  anti- 
dancing  folk  evened  things  up  by  claim 
ing  to  be  a  great  deal  better  than  the 
dancing  crowd.  As  a  sort  of  antidote  for 
the  dancing  germ,  the  anti-dancing  crowd 
indulged  in  a  form  of  diversion  known 
locally  as  the  "play  party."  One  needed 
no  invitation  to  attend  a  dance.  All  that 
was  required  of  him  was  a  deposit  of  25 
cents,  in  return  for  which  he  received  a 
number,  written  usually  in  lead-pencil 
upon  a  fragmentary  portion  of  a  paste 
board  box,  and  tacit  permission  to  dance 
whenever  his  turn  came.  But  it  wasn't 
considered  polite  to  go  to  a  "  play  party ' ' 
unless  one  had  an  invitation. 

The  dancing  parties  were  conducted  on 
strict  business  principles.  If  no  supper 

(41) 


42  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

were  served  the  dancer  was  assessed  25 
cents.  If  supper  had  been  provided  he 
paid  50  cents,  although  it  was  optional 
with  him  whether  he  took  supper.  Some 
times,  if  the  dance  was  very  swell  and 
the  supper  more  than  usually  elaborate, 
the  prices  were  doubled.  At  that  time 
the  two-step  had  not  been  invented  and 
they  were  still  dancing  the  polka  and  the 
schottische,  but  mostly  the  dances  were 
quadrilles,  a  waltz  or  schottische  being 
thrown  in  every  fourth  or  fifth  dance. 

As  has  been  noted,  attendance  on 
"play  parties"  was  by  invitation  only. 
If  one  were  lucky  at  a  "play  party"  it 
fell  to  his  good  fortune  to  kiss  every  girl 
present  sometime  during  the  evening. 
The  "play  party"  was  devoted  to  the 
playing  of  games  and  the  paying  of  for 
feits.  One  of  the  games  was  "Miller 
Boy,"  in  which  several  couples  marched 
in  a  circle  with  a  lone  lad  as  its  center, 
singing  a  mournful  ditty  about  a  miller 
boy  who  took  his  toll  with  a  free  good- 


The  Neighborhood 's  Gayer  Side.      43 

will,  and  who  at  the  same  time  kept  one 
hand  in  the  hopper  and  the  other  in  the 
sack.  At  a  signal  the  marchers  changed 
partners,  and  the  lad  in  the  center  made 
effort  to  forcibly  separate  some  other  lad 
from  his  girl.  If  he  were  successful  the 
lad  bereft  of  a  marching  companion  paid 
a  forfeit  and  took  his  turn  as  the  hub 
around  which  the  spokes  of  the  wheel 
revolved.  It  was  a  wildly  exciting  form 
of  entertainment. 

There  were  several  dozens  of  these 
games— "Old  Dan  Tucker,"  "Weevilly 
Wheat,"  "Fruit  Basket,"  "Tin  Tin,"  and 
others, — but  as  they  were  all,  like  "Mil 
ler  Boy,"  founded  on  kissing  the  girls 
later  on  in  the  evening,  they  need  not  be 
reviewed  at  length.  When  forfeits  had 
been  imposed  upon  everybody  pres 
ent,  they  were  sold  by  an  extempore 
auctioneer  over  the  head  of  one  of  the 
participants.  This  participant  named 
the  price  which  the  owner  had  to  pay  to 
again  secure  possession  of  his  property, 


44  At  the  Grass  Roots. 


but  as  forfeits  were  always  redeemed  by 
kissing  some  person  of  the  opposite  sex, 
the  price  was  never  considered  prohib 
itive. 

Perhaps  the  most  popular  plan  for  re 
deeming  forfeits  was  the  game  called 
"Postoffice."  In  "Postoffice"  the  per 
son  bent  on  retrieving  his  property  from 
the  hands  of  the  trustee  of  forfeits  went 
into  an  adjoining  room  and  sent  word  to 
some  girl,  usually  his  sweetheart,  that  a 
letter  awaited  her.  "Postoffice"  was 
really  the  ideal  form  for  liquidating  one's 
osculatory  obligations,  because  he  was 
not  compelled  to  wipe  out  the  debt  in 
full  view  of  a  jeering  audience,  and  he 
could  pay  as  much  interest  as  the  girl 
would  stand  for.  Building  a  ' '  Telegraph 
Line"  and  "Picking  the  Cherries"  also 
had  a  strong  following  among  those  stag 
gering  under  the  burden  of  debt,  for  in 
each  of  these  popular  divertisements 
every  lad  kissed  two  girls  and  every  girl 
was  kissed  by  two  young  men. 


The  Neighborhood's  Gayer  Side.      45 

This  country  isn't  what  it  used  to  be. 
One  cannot  kiss  a  young  woman  now 
unless  he  happens  to  be  engaged  to  her, 
and  the  cost  of  dancing  has  advanced 
600  per  cent. 


IN  MEMORY  OF  AN  ORNERY 
PUP. 

Generally  speaking,  I  have  no  com 
plaint  to  make.  The  world  has  been 
kinder  to  me  than  I  deserved.  Its  peo 
ple  have  often  returned  good  for  evil. 
My  digestion  has  been  saved  to  me  unim 
paired,  and  while  I  would  have  preferred 
to  keep  my  hair  a  little  longer,  hair  is 
more  or  less  a  thing  of  vanity  and  should 
not  be  entered  when  the  ledger  is  bal 
anced. 

Two  or  three  women  to  whom  I  had 
been  fair  and  gentle  hurt  me  by  being 
cruel  when  it  would  have  been  just  as 
easy  to  be  kind.  A  few  men  whom  I 
trusted  and  writh  whom  I  was  frank  and 
honest  passed  me  the  hot  end  of  it.  But 
in  the  main,  I  have  faith  in  the  human 
animal  and  stand  for  him.  And  still.  I 
must  admit  that  my  warmest  friends  have 
been  dogs  and  tobacco.  No  dog  friend 

(46) 


In  Memory  of  an  Ornery  Pup.        47 

ever  went  back  on  me.  Tobacco  never 
failed  to  sooth  and  comfort.  Looking 
through  the  smoke  that  curled  from  my 
cigar  I  have  dreamed  my  finest  dreams. 
Never  yet  have  I  looked  in  vain  to  a  dog 
for  reassurance  and  sympathy.  And  so 
I  dedicate  one  chapter  of  this  little  vol 
ume  to  an  Ornery  Pup  whose  brief  biog 
raphy  runs  like  this. 

Once  there  was  a  pup  cast  adrift  on  the 
tide  of  dogdom  who  came  a  derelict  to 
the  kitchen  door  of  an  old-fashioned 
woman  I  know.  He  was  an  Ornery  Pup 
whose  lineage  was  untraceable  beyond  the 
first  generation  of  forbears.  His  pedi 
gree  was  tainted  at  every  crossing  by 
mongrel  blood.  His  coat  was  mangy  and 
his  bones  stuck  out.  But  when  he 
touched  at  the  kitchen  door  of  the  old- 
fashioned  woman  he  was  in  still  waters 
and  a  safe  harbor. 

Between  the  Ornery  Pup  and  me  there 
sprang  up  a  fast  friendship.  For  six 
weeks  we  fished  in  the  creek,  watched 


48  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

for  the  young  squirrels  in  the  woods  pas 
ture,  and  lay  for  hours  in  the  sun  on  the 
grass-grown  declivity  that  sloped  down 
toward  the  timothy  meadow.  And  then, 
without  saying  even  "good-by"  to  the 
Pup,  I  went  away  to  try  my  luck  else 
where,  leaving  him  to  his  amours  and  the 
humdrum  life  of  the  farm. 

It  was  two  years  before  I  dropped  an 
chor  in  that  port  again.  I  tacked  into 
the  harbor  well  along  in  the  small  hours 
of  a  moonlight  night,  as  much  a  derelict 
as  had  been  the  Ornery  Pup  of  two  years 
before.  For  I  had  fought  my  first  im 
portant  battle  with  the  world  and  had 
retreated. 

Heartsick  and  weary  I  swung  the  front 
gate  open,  and  as  the  latch  clicked  the 
Ornery  Pup,  grown  now  into  a  mature 
dog,  came  bounding  to  meet  me,  and 
jumping  upon  me  with  his  dirty  paws, 
licked  my  face  in  an  ecstacy  of  joy.  It 
mattered  not  to  him  that  my  coat  was 
old  and  ragged  and  that  my  shirt  had 


In  Memory  of  an  Ornery  Pup.       49 

gone  too  infrequently  to  the  laundry. 
He  cared  nothing  that  I  needed  both  a 
bath  and  a  shave.  His  friend  had  come 
back  and  he  was  glad. 

The  Ornery  Pup  is  dead  these  seven 
years  now.  We  buried  him  on  the  little 
mound  above  the  pool  in  the  creek  where 
he  and  I  together  caught  the  five-pound 
bass,  and  I  sometimes  think  a  little  of  my 
heart  went  into  the  grave  with  his  in 
animate  clay.  For  once  when  the  wind 
blew  out  of  the  northeast  and  the  sky 
was  gray,  the  Ornery  Pup  brought  to  me 
the  first  kind  message  I  had  heard  in 
two  vears. 


THE  PRINCESS  ENTERS. 

I  often  wonder  what  became  of  Emma 
Barnhart,  who  taught  the  Doane  school 
for  a  couple  of  years  along  in  the  early 
eighties.  Miss  Barnhart  was  the  first 
princess  I  ever  knew  at  all  intimately. 
Up  to  the  time  she  first  shed  her  effulgent 
beauty  and  daintiness  upon  my  young 
life,  I  had  known  only  the  girls  who  lived 
on  adjoining  farms.  They  were  good, 
sensible  girls,  who  could  milk  cows,  make 
butter,  set  a  hen,  and  in  the  pinch  of  har 
vest-time  and  haying  drive  the  binder  or 
run  a  sulky  hayrake.  But  they  were,  I 
regret  to  admit,  not  so  very  beautiful  or 
artistic.  They  wore  ill-fitting  dresses  of 
coarse  cloth,  big  checked  aprons,  heavy, 
broad-toed  shoes — even  rubber  boots  in 
muddy  weather — and  home-made  sun- 
bonnets.  They  were  always  badly 
tanned,  and  in  the  spring  and  fall  their 
hands  were  chapped  and  red  like  a  boy's. 

(50) 


The  Princess  Enters.  51 

So  when  Miss  Barnhart  came  from  a 
neighboring  town  to  teach  our  school  I 
had  my  first  intimation  of  the  fact  that 
the  world  was  not  bounded  on  the  north 
by  Miller's  sawmill,  on  the  east  by  the 
Porter  Hill  bridge,  on  the  south  by  Sal- 
ter's  stone  barn,  and  on  the  west  by  Rock 
creek.  Miss  Barnhart  had  what  I  have 
since  learned  to  describe  as  an  aureole 
of  reddish  hair  that  shone  like  burnished 
copper,  a  delicate,  creamy  complexion, 
soft  white  hands  with  tapering  fingers, 
and  she  wore  gowns  that  rustled  as  she 
walked,  and  soft,  fluffy  things  about  her 
neck  and  wrists. 

In  many  respects  Miss  Barnhart  was  a 
decided  innovation  to  the  pupils  at 
Doane.  We  had  been  accustomed  to  big, 
husky  men  teachers  who  whipped  the  big 
boys  for  the  slightest  infraction  of  the 
rules,  and  who  began  their  day's  work  by 
repairing  to  a  neighboring  growth  of 
hedge  and  cutting  six  or  seven  long,  stout 
withes  to  be  used  in  the  exigencies  of 


52  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

school  government.  Miss  Barnhart  in 
troduced  new  methods.  She  began  by 
putting  us  on  honor  so  far  as  our  behavior 
was  concerned,  and  let  it  be  known  that 
she  did  not  consider  it  any  particular 
crime  to  whisper  during  school  hours. 
She  taught  us  songs,  and  we  devoted  a 
portion  of  the  study  hours  every  day  to 
singing.  In  fact,  I  think  she  was  entirely 
responsible  for  the  idea,  which  I  was 
twelve  years  in  shaking  off,  that  I  could 
sing,  she  having,  early  in  the  term,  made 
me  leader  of  one  division  of  the  school 
chorus. 

Up  to  the  time  of  Miss  Barnhart's  ad 
vent  into  the  neighborhood  I  had  never 
been  called  anything  but  "Dodd,"  "you 
there,"  "don't  be  all  day  about  it,"  or 
' '  that  little  devil. ' '  She  greatly  surprised 
and  pleased  me  by  calling  me  "Mr.  Gas- 
ton."  In  fact,  she  gave  all  boys  over 
eight  the  title  of  "Mr."  and  invariably 
addressed  the  girls  over  six  as  "Miss 
Lou,"  "Miss  Ella,"  or  "Miss  Ada,"  as  the 


The  Princess  Enters.  53 

case  might  be.  Before  Christmas  she  was 
the  most  popular  person  I  have  ever 
known,  and  she  taught  the  year  out  with 
out  once  being  criticised  by  either  parent 
or  pupil,  a  record  which  will  probably 
stand  for  all  time. 

On  the  closing  day  of  school  there  was 
a  big  dinner  at  the  schoolhouse,  and 
everybody  in  the  district  came  in  for  the 
dinner  and  the  exercises.  At  the  close 
Miss  Barnhart  tried  to  make  a  little 
speech,  but  she  choked  up  and  finally 
broke  down  and  cried,  and  then  every 
pupil  in  school  sniffled  and  the  girls  blub 
bered  as  though  their  hearts  were  broken. 

Ed  Fought,  who  was  the  biggest  boy  in 
school  and  who  had  a  certain  amount  of 
dignity  to  sustain,  always  claimed  that 
he  laughed  while  the  others  were  crying, 
but  I  sat  in  the  seat  just  across  the  aisle 
from  Ed  and  saw  him  wiping  his  eyes  on 
his  shirtsleeve.  Ed  claimed  that  as  Miss 
Barnhart  was  only  going  to  her  home 
twenty  miles  away  to  spend  the  summer 


54  At  the  Grass  Roots. 


there  was  nothing  to  cry  about,  but  he 
couldn't  fool  me,  although  I  could  see 
that  his  sisters  believed  him  implicitly 

Miss  Barnhart  came  back  in  the  fall 
to  teach  another  year,  and  was  just  as 
popular  as  before.  Of  course  it  is  use 
less  for  me  to  say  that  I  had  long  before 
made  up  my  mind  to  marry  her  when  I 
grew  up,  and  so  when  the  story  that  she 
was  to  be  married  to  a  man  from  a  distant 
town  in  the  spring  was  first  circulated, 
I  was  very  miserable.  At  first  I  scouted 
the  idea,  saying  that  I  did  not  believe 
Miss  Barnhart  would  marry  the  best  man 
that  ever  lived,  but  it  leaked  out  dur 
ing  the  winter  that  he  was  coming  to  see 
her,  and  one  morning  along  toward  the 
end  of  the  term  he  came  to  school  with  her 
and  stayed  until  noon. 

I  had  expected  a  great  deal  of  Miss 
Barnhart's  suitor,  but  he  was  distinctly 
disappointing  and  I  couldn't  see  what 
she  saw  in  him.  He  was  a  little  fat  man 
with  a  fierce  black  moustache,  who  seemed 


The  Princess  Enters.  55 

to  get  his  exercise  by  twirling  his  watch- 
chain  on  his  fingers.  When  he  laughed 
he  cackled,  and  I  know  now  that  he  must 
have  had  an  enormous  bay  window  by 
the  time  he  was  forty.  He  was  that  sort. 
At  the  close  of  the  school  we  had 
another  big  dinner,  and  another  surpris 
ingly  large  tearfall.  Miss  Barnhart 
packed  up  her  books  and  things  and 
went  away,  and  I  never  saw  her  afterward. 
I  kept  hoping  that  something  would 
happen  to  break  off  her  engagement, 
but  nothing  did  happen,  and  she  mar 
ried  the  little  fat  man  in  the  early  sum 
mer.  I  was  very  unhappy  for  a  few 
days,  but  I  soon  got  over  it,  although  at 
long  intervals  I  still  find  myself  thinking 
about  Miss  Barnhart  and  wondering  what 
became  of  her. 


THE  LURE  OF  THE  CIRCUS. 

The  biggest  piece  of  news  that  ever 
happened  in  our  neighborhood  was  when 
Ol  Swank  and  Vern  Harbaugh  ran  away 
with  a  circus.  Neither  was  over  sixteen 
years  old  at  the  time.  They  had  gone 
down  to  Osage  Mission  to  see  the  circus 
with  a  lot  of  other  boys,  and  the  spirit  of 
unrest  which  surges  in  the  breast  of  every 
boy  having  swept  them  off  their  feet, 
they  were  lured  into  the  lair  of  the  boss 
of  the  roustabouts.  There  was  an  im 
pression  current  among  the  boys  of  the 
neighborhood  that  Ol  and  Vern  were 
wearing  spangled  tights  and  riding  a  fat 
white  horse  around  an  improvised  ring, 
kissing  their  hands  the  while  in  response 
to  the  plaudits  of  an  assembled  multi 
tude.  But  that  fiction  was  later  on  ex 
ploded.  For  it  developed  that  Vern 
looked  after  the  monkey  cage  and  drove 
a  wagon  in  the  parade,  while  Ol  was  em 
ployed  in  the  cook  tent. 

(56) 


The  Lure  of  the  Circus.  57 

The  affair  was  the  talk  of  the  neigh 
borhood  for  weeks.  Ol  left  a  widowed 
stepmother  and  a  large  family  of  smaller 
brothers  and  sisters  whose  principal  sup 
port  he  had  been,  and  there  was  much 
indignation  because  of  his  summary  de 
sertion  of  them.  He  had  not  gotten 
along  well  with  his  stepmother,  but  she 
was  an  admirable  and  worthy  woman, 
and  the  sympathy  of  the  neighborhood 
was  with  her.  It  was  freely  predicted 
that  the  boys  would  come  sneaking  back 
within  a  week,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
Ol  never  came  back.  Once  or  twice  he 
was  heard  from  in  remote  sections  of  the 
country,  but  he  never  sat  foot  in  the 
neighborhood  again,  and  in  the  course  of 
a  few  years  all  trace  of  him  was  lost. 

The  boys  ran  away  in  August.  Vern 
made  land  at  his  father's  hearthside  early 
in  the  following  January.  Curiously 
enough,  he  seemed  to  have  lost  all  of  his 
desire  to  be  a  circus  performer,  but  he 
consented  to  teach  the  boys  in  the  neigh- 


58  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

borhood  the  business,  and  nearly  all  of 
the  idle  time  during  the  following  year 
was  devoted  to  it.  Vern's  circus  school 
turned  out  a  number  of  finished  perform 
ers.  It  came  to  be  one  of  the  commonest 
of  sights  to  see  a  sedate  plowhorse  loping 
across  the  prairie,  a  boy  poised  on  one 
foot  on  his  broad  back.  A  number  of 
polished  "flip-flop"  turners  were  also 
graduated.  Al  Grable  could  do  a  double 
"flip-flop "  faultlessly  from  a  short  spring 
board,  and  Frank  Harbaugh  reached  that 
point  of  perfection  at  which  he  could 
negotiate  a  back  "flip-flop"  standing 
squarely  on  level  ground,  with  the  great 
est  of  ease.  In  fact,  I  have  since  seen 
circus  performers  fail  in  turns  which  the 
boys  of  our  neighborhood  did  handily 
without  the  aid  of  circus  accessories. 

Interest  in  the  circus  business  was 
finally  submerged  in  the  excitement  over 
the  return  of  Henry  Fought  from  Colo 
rado,  and  the  performers  went  out  of 
business.  Henry  was  the  oldest  of  the 


The  Lure  of  the  Circus.  59 

Fought  boys,  and  had  been  in  Colorado 
a  number  of  years.  Those  of  us  who 
came  into  the  neighborhood  after  his  de 
parture  had  heard  a  great  deal  about  him. 
The  fact  that  he  was  steadily  employed 
at  $3  a  day  and  was  saving  his  money 
gave  him  considerable  distinction,  and  as 
he  had  been  a  great  favorite  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  local  interest  in  him  held  up 
well. 

Henry  came  back  one  fall  wearing  the 
best  clothes  I  had  ever  seen  up  to  that 
time.  He  visited  the  school  within  a  day 
or  two  after  his  arrival,  and  if  any  doubt 
had  been  entertained  as  to  his  status  in 
the  neighborhood  it  was  at  once  set  at 
rest.  For  the  teacher  not  only  greeted 
him  cordially,  but  permitted  him  to  sit 
with  two  or  three  of  the  big  girls  during 
the  afternoon  and  help  them  with  their 
examples.  This  latter  was  a  special  mark 
of  distinction,  and  was  conferred  only 
upon  honored  guests  of  the  school.  I 
confess,  that  at  first  sight,  Henry  was  a 


60  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

little  disappointing  to  me.  For  he  wore 
chin  whiskers,  and  I  am  so  prejudiced 
against  the  chin  whisker  that  even  now, 
when  the  breadth  and  knowledge  of  ma- 
turer  years  have  swept  away  many  of  my 
old  prejudices,  I  am  never  able  to  asso 
ciate  it  in  my  mind  with  greatness  or 
distinction . 

The  stories  of  Henry's  prosperity  were 
borne  out  immediately  upon  his  return 
by  his  purchase  of  a  top  buggy  and  a 
breech -loading  shotgun.  Up  to  that  time 
there  had  been  but  one  top  buggy  in  the 
community  and  no  breech-loading  shot 
gun.  The  other  Fought  boys,  Ed,  Grant, 
and  Bill,  were  permitted  to  hunt  with  the 
gun,  and  it  not  only  gave  them  a  great 
advantage  over  the  other  boys  when  the 
ducks  and  geese  were  flying,  but  caused 
a  lot  of  enmity  and  jealousy  as  well. 
Most  of  us  had  nothing  better  than  single- 
barrel  guns,  and  there  were  more  con 
demned  army  muskets  than  any  other 
kind  of  shooting-iron.  And  so  when  the 


The  Lure  of  the  Circus.  61 

Fought  boys  began  to  bag  three  and  four 
mallards  at  a  shot  and  talk  contemp 
tuously  of  muzzle-loading  guns  there  was 
much  indignation  and  hard  feeling  toward 
them. 

I  had  nothing  but  an  old  cap-and-ball 
rifle,  and  never  killed  anything  anyway, 
but  I  took  sides  with  the  other  boys 
against  the  Foughts,  who  were  thought 
to  be  "stuck  up  "over  Henry's  gun.  We 
were  constantly  inventing  stories  about 
the  prodigious  amount  of  game  we  killed 
with  our  antiquated  weapons  and  running 
down  the  breech-loader,  although  it  was 
really  a  very  good  gun.  Half  a  dozen 
fights  resulted,  and  in  the  excitement  of 
trying  to  beat  the  Fought  boys  the  circus 
business  was  forgotten. 


WHEN  FLORA  DIED. 

They  say  youth  is  untroubled.  The 
wish  that  lies  nearest  the  heart  of  every 
man  who  fights  his  way  is  that  he  might 
go  back  to  boyhood.  The  shank  of  every 
hard  day  brings  to  the  tired  man  mem 
ories  of  his  boyhood  years.  And  yet  I 
doubt  that  youth  is  happier  or  less  the 
prey  of  sorrow  than  mature  age  Look 
ing  backward  over  a  stretch  of  years, 
each  of  which  has  had  its  share  of  gray 
days,  I  recall  no  grief  so  keen,  so  tem 
pestuous,  as  that  which  came  to  me  the 
day  Flora  died. 

Flora  was  a  bay  mare  of  Kentucky 
lineage,  which  was  from  the  spring  she 
came  a  yearling  until  the  day  of  her 
death  as  much  a  member  of  the  family 
as  those  born  into  it.  She  had  all  the 
fine  attributes  of  humanity  without  its 
vices.  She  was  so  kindly  and  gentle  that 
little  children  played  about  her  heels. 

(62) 


When  Flora  Died.  63  . 

She  never  lost  her  temper,  nor  failed  to 
do  her  best,  and  she  had  such  courage 
and  spirit  that  when  she  was  sixteen 
years  old,  riding  her  without  whip  or  spur 
and  with  no  guide  but  a  halter,  I  gave  the 
dust  of  the  country  road  to  the  fastest 
horses  in  the  country  round  about. 

It  may  be  said  that  she  did  not  under 
stand  my  boyish  confidences,  and  that 
what  I  mistook  for  sympathy  and  under 
standing  were  only  evidences  of  her  love 
for  me,  but  I  shall  always  believe  she 
understood.  When  the  old  home  ties 
were  broken  up  and  the  family  went 
pioneering  to  Kansas,  Flora  was  taken 
along.  The  other  horses  were  sold,  but 
it  would  have  been  quite  as  possible  to 
have  left  the  baby  behind  as  it  would 
have  been  to  leave  Flora.  And  so  the 
intimacy  that  began  when  I  was  a  boy 
of  five  ended  only  with  her  death.  I 
count  it  as  one  of  my  most  precious  mem 
ories  that  during  all  those  years  I  never 
struck  her  with  a  whip  or  raised  my  voice 
to  her  in  anger. 


64  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

I  shall  not  forget  the  day  she  died. 
For  hours  I  had  huddled  over  the  fire  in 
the  kitchen  stove,  mute  and  with  misery 
in  my  heart.  I  could  not  go  to  the  barn 
where  she  lay  dying,  for  my  soul  rebelled 
against  even  the  sight  of  her  suffering. 
And  when  they  brought  the  news  that 
she  was  dead  I  ran  blindly  down  to  the 
creek  bank,  where  I  lay  for  hours  sobbing 
away  the  grief  that  harrowed  my  soul. 

Life  has  not  always  been  well  with  me 
since.  I  have  stood  where  death  wrung 
the  tendrils  of  my  heart  and  turned  to 
it  a  face  unwashed  by  tears.  Sorrow  has 
never  since  laid  upon  me  a  hand  so  heavy 
that  it  startled  me  into  exclamation. 
Therefore,  I  doubt  that  youth  is  more 
care-free  than  age,  or  less  trammeled  by 
grief.  I,  at  least,  found  its  sorrows  quite 
as  hard  to  bear. 

It  is  seventeen  years  since  Flora  died, 
and  I  remember  still.  For  it  seems  to 
me  that  of  all  those  I  have  known,  she 
was  the  kindliest,  the  gentlest,  and  the 
least  disappointing. 


THE  GHOST  AT  SCOTT'S 
CHURCH. 

If  I  have  any  pride  in  myself,  it  is 
because  of  the  belief  that  I  am  of  a 
practical  turn  of  mind.  I  do  not  fol 
low  the  crazy  pendulum  of  public  senti 
ment.  I  do  not  chase  fool  fads.  I  do 
not  allow  my  opinion  to  be  warped  by 
every  four-flusher  who  chances  to  get 
the  attention  of  the  public.  I  try 
always  to  be  fair,  sane  and  practical. 
I  fail  often  and  do  fool  things,  but  I 
try  to  square  everything  by  the  rule  of 
common-sense.  Theoretically,  I  do  not 
believe  in  ghosts  or  apparitions  from 
the  spirit  world.  Applied  common- 
sense  rebels  at  the  idea  of  such  things 
and  casts  them  out.  But  I  once  saw  a 
ghostly  visitor  which  I  have  never  been 
able  to  explain  away. 

Scott's  churchyard  lay  along  the  slope 
of  a  long  clay  hill.  The  highway  ran 

(65) 


66  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

alongside.  The  church  stood  at  the 
top  of  the  hill,  on  the  highest  point 
in  the  country  round  about.  At  the 
bottom  of  the  hill,  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  the  lower  side  of  the  church 
yard,  lay  a  swamp  partially  redeemed 
to  agriculture,  but  still  the  abiding- 
place  of  frogs  and  other  scaly  things. 

One  summer  evening  Press  Hobbs,  re 
turning  home  at  dusk  from  a  day's  work 
in  a  neighbor's  field,  started  to  climb 
the  hill  past  the  churchyard.  He  was 
a  practical-minded  man,  then  nearing 
fifty,  stolid  and  unimaginative  by  nature. 
Hobbs  encountered  something  on  the 
hillside  which  caused  him  to  take  to  his 
heels  and  flee  as  if  from  the  wrath  to 
come.  He  brought  up  at  a  neighboring 
farmhouse  panting,  exhausted,  and  in  a 
condition  of  mind  bordering  on  hysterics. 
He  never  gave  a  lucid  explanation  of 
what  he  saw,  but  the  story  circulated 
through  the  neighborhood  and  brought 
out  other  stories  of  queer  things  en- 


The  Ghost  at  Scott's  Church.         6V 

countered  along  the  roadside  leading  by 
the  churchyard. 

In  the  course  of  a  week  the  neighbor 
hood  was  in  a  ferment  about  it,  and  little 
else  was  talked  of.  Frank  Halpin,  Will 
McDannold  and  I  were  boon  com 
panions,  and  among  the  boys,  the  ad 
venturous  spirits  of  the  neighborhood. 
Nearly  all  of  the  neighborhood  crime 
and  misdemeanor  was  charged  to  us, 
and  the  bookkeeping  was,  in  the  main, 
correct.  Halpin  was  about  17.  Mc 
Dannold  and  I  were  a  couple  of  years 
younger.  We  talked  the  Hobbs  ghost 
over  between  ourselves  for  a  week  or 
two,  and  finally  agreed  to  spend  a  night 
in  and  about  the  churchyard  in  the  role 
of  an  investigating  committee.  We  kept 
our  intentions  secret,  and  although  the 
story  afterwards  leaked  out,  it  was  years 
before  our  experience  became  the  com 
mon  property  of  the  people  of  the  com 
munity. 

Halpin,  McDannold  and  I  met  by  ap- 


68  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

pointment  at  the  cross-roads  a  mile 
north  of  the  church  one  evening  just 
after  sunset.  We  reached  the  bridge 
across  the  swamp  just  as  the  dusk  began 
to  gather,  and  started  leisurely  up  the 
hill.  It  was  a  perfect  .summer  even 
ing.  The  whirr  and  clatter  of  a  har 
vester  in  a  near-by  wheat-field  had  just 
ceased.  The  frogs  in  the  swamp  were 
taking  the  first  bars  of  the  "Te  Deum." 
We  poked  along  up  the  hill  without  tak 
ing  much  heed  of  our  mission.  Every 
event  of  the  evening  is  clearly  stamped 
on  my  memory  to  this  day,  and  I  re 
member  that  I  was  telling  the  other 
boys  about  Lewis  Wetzel,  a  celebrated 
Indian-fighter  of  whom  I  had  just  been 
reading,  and  we  were  speculating  as 
to  whether  it  were  possible  for  a  man  to 
load  his  rifle  while  running  at  full  speed. 
Wetzel's  biographer  had  claimed  this  as 
one  of  Wetzel's  accomplishments. 

I  was  still  babbling  away,  and  we  had 
passed  the  lower  corner  of  the  church- 


The  Ghost  at  Scott's  Chiirch.         69 

yard.  Suddenly  Halpin,  who  was  lead 
ing,  stopped,  and  McDannold  grabbed 
me  by  the  arm.  Straight  ahead  of  us, 
in  the  center  of  the  road,  was  the  gigantic 
figure  of  a  man  standing  motionless  and 
at  ease.  I  make  due  allowance  for  the 
tense  condition  of  my  nerves  and  my 
youthful  imagination,  but  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me  that  the  figure  was  at  least 
ten  feet  high  and  proportionately  broad. 

Halpin  had  nerve  that  was  as  fine  as 
chilled  steel,  and  the  plugging  deter 
mination  and  obstinacy  of  a  mule  He 
was  afterwards  a  celebrated  peace  offi 
cer  in  the  far  West,  and  died  with  his 
boots  on,  his  six-shooter  barking  to  his 
last  breath.  After  the  first  start  of  sur 
prise  he  pushed  forward  straight  toward 
the  figure,  McDannold  and  I  following. 
We  seemed  to  be  approaching  it,  but 
when  we  reached  the  spot  where  it  had 
appeared  to  be,  it  suddenly  vanished  into 
the  air  of  the  dusky  summer  evening. 

We     stopped     instinctively,      and      I 


70  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

glanced  nervously  behind  me.  The 
figure  was  leaning  against  the  fence  at 
the  lower  corner  of  the  churchyard,  more 
than  fifty  yards  away.  Halpin  hesi 
tated  not  a  second,  and  again  led  the 
way  toward  it.  When  we  reached  the 
lower  corner  of  the  churchyard  there 
was  nothing  there,  but  we  could  see  the 
figure  dimly  outlined  at  the  top  of  the 
hill  fifty  yards  or  more  beyond  where 
we  first  encountered  it.  It  vanished 
again  as  we  approached  and  reappeared 
almost  immediately  in  the  churchyard. 
McDannold's  nerve  oozed  away  at 
this  juncture,  and  mine  followed.  We 
climbed  the  fence  into  the  field  opposite 
and  streaked  across  it  panic-stricken, 
Halpin  following,  blowing  like  a  porpoise. 
He  was  the  last  to  give  way,  but  it  had 
been  too  much  even  for  him.  We  ran 
most  of  the  way  home,  and  the  re 
searches  of  the  investigating  committee 
were  never  carried  any  further.  We 
made  a  compact  to  keep  it  secret,  and 


The  Ghost  at  Scott's  Church.         71 

it  was  not  until  years  afterward  that  I, 
then  a  man  grown,  revisited  the  neigh 
borhood  and  told  the  story. 

I  do  not  believe  in  ghosts  or  appa 
ritions  from  the  spirit  world.  But  what 
was  it  Halpin,  McDannold  and  I  saw  on 
that  dusky  summer  evening,  now  many 
years  to  the  windward,  in  the  road  along 
side  Scott's  churchyard  ? 


BACK  AT  GRIGSBY'S   STATION. 

I  spent  a  Sunday  lately  back  at  Grigs- 
by's  Station.  In  the  memory  of  every 
man  who  gravitates  from  the  clean  dirt 
to  paved  streets  there  is  a  Grigsby's 
Station,  and  most  of  them  pretend  to 
love  it.  I  don't.  Frankly,  the  town 
grinds  upon  my  soul  and  maddens  me. 
I  hate  its  narrow,  jaundiced  view  of 
life,  and  I  resent  the  prying  interest 
of  its  uncouth,  unshaven  men  and  its 
gossipy,  slatternly  women.  I  hate  its 
meddling  and  its  tendency  to  sit  in 
judgment  on  the  affairs  of  others,  al 
though  I  do  not  forget  that  when  sor 
row  comes  to  rest  on  one's  doorstep 
Grigsby's  Station  is  always  responsive, 
and  that  it  gives  freely  in  sympathy 
and  in  neighborly  kindness. 

Grigsby's  Station  wears  somewhat 
ostentatiously  the  mantle  of  religion. 
Human  endeavor  finds  its  principal  out- 

(72) 


Back  at  Grigsbys  Station.  73 

let  there  in  getting  people  to  the  mourn 
er's  bench.  Seven  months  in  the  year 
they  hold  revival  services  at  the  churches. 
The  fullness  of  the  remaining  five  is 
consumed  in  getting  the  converts  into 
the  water.  They  talk  of  the  moral 
atmosphere  of  the  town,  and  boast  that 
it  never  had  a  saloon.  And  yet  during 
the  past  twenty  years  I've  known  a 
hundred  strong,  useful  young  men  in 
the  town  who  went  to  hell  through 
drink,  and  I've  known  a  hundred  girls 
whp  turned  to  the  left  because  the  town 
was  so  busy  saving  souls  that  it  had  no 
time  to  provide  the  clean,  simple  diver 
sions  beloved  by  youth,  or  to  point  the 
way  to  a  higher  plane  of  living. 

Sunday  begins  early  in  Grigsby's  Sta 
tion,  and  on  the  day  of  which  I  write  I 
tumbled  downstairs  to  a  late  breakfast 
to  find  the  Neighbor  Woman  who  teaches 
a  class  in  the  Sunday  school  holding 
converse  with  the  Family.  She  had 
dropped  in  to  find  why  the  Family  had 


74  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

gone  to  a  show  in  the  "opry  house"  the 
night  before  instead  of  attending  the 
services  at  which  the  presiding  elder  de 
livered  a  sermon.  She  noted  also  that 
the  Family  had  been  somewhat  irregu 
lar  in  its  attendance  on  Sunday  school, 
and  pressed  it  for  a  reason.  And  as  she 
chattered  on  I  noted  curiously  enough 
that  while  there  was  much  of  the  church, 
of  the  minister,  the  prayer-meeting  and 
kindred  topics  in  her  speech,  it  was  all 
pitched  to  the  note  of  querulous  com 
plaint.  There  was  nothing  of  the  joy 
of  living,  she  touched  no  chord  of  fine 
endeavor,  and  made  no  record  of  the 
deeds  of  those  whose  influence  was  ex 
erted  outside  the  narrow  sphere  in  which 
she  lived  and  moved. 

In  these  later  years  I  do  not  go  much 
about  in  Grigsby's  Station.  Those  I 
knew  intimately  and  well  have  mostly 
gone  away  and  those  who  remain  hold 
no  interest  for  me.  But  on  the  occasion 
of  which  I  write,  my  cigar-case  had  run 


Back  at  Grigs  by  s  Station.  75 

low  and  I  harked  uptown  to  replenish 
it.  The  center  of  activity  uptown 
seemed  to  ebb  and  flow  in  front  of  the 
livery  stable,  where  twenty  or  thirty 
men,  most  of  whom  needed  clean  linen 
and  a  shave,  were  grouped.  In  the  bar 
ber  shop  a  hot  game  of  checkers  wTas  in 
progress,  and  there  was  tremendous  ex 
citement  among  the  onlookers.  A  little 
farther  up  the  street  a  man  came  out 
of  the  butcher-shop  with  a  roll  of  meat 
under  his  arm.  As  I  walked  back  the 
'bus  went  by  on  its  way  to  the  noon 
train. 

After  dinner  Mrs.  Shank  Reeves  came 
over  to  sit  awhile.  Mrs.  Reeves  was 
much  perturbed.  One  of  the  Slote  boys 
had  married  one  of  the  Peck  girls- 
somewhat  unexpectedly,  it  seemed — the 
night  before,  and  Mrs.  Reeves  was  in 
a  flutter  of  excitement  to  learn  whether 
it  was  a  "military"  wedding.  I  left  the 
house  again  to  shut  out  the  memory  of 
Mrs.  Reeves. 


76  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

Four  girls  none  of  them  more  than 
sixteen,  came  down  the  street  past  the 
hotel  and  peeked  in.  They  had  hoped 
to  find  a  traveling  gentleman,  but  there 
was  no  one  hanging  about  the  hotel 
office  and  they  went  on  to  Epworth 
League.  I  continued  my  walk.  On  a 
back  lot  four  men  were  pitching  horse 
shoes.  A  little  farther  on,  Ed  Simons's 
dog  had  chased  a  cat  up  a  tree  and  was 
holding  it.  Just  beyond  the  school- 
house  grounds  I  ran  into  and  disturbed 
a  fence-corner  poker  game. 

I  got  back  in  time  to  join  the  crowd 
on  its  way  to  see  the  4 : 38  train  come  in. 
At  the  station  there  was  great  excite 
ment.  Someone  had  broken  a  pane  of 
glass  in  the  waiting-room,  and  a  young 
couple  reputed  to  have  recently  become 
engaged  were  walking  up  and  down 
the  platform.  I  returned  to  the  house 
to  find  Mrs.  Shipley  there.  She  had 
run  over  to  borrow  a  little  coffee  for 
breakfast,  and  to  express  her  opinion 


Back  at  Grigsbys  Station. 


of  the  Widow  Carver.  Pretty  soon 
the  church-bells  rang.  At  eight  o'clock 
a  dog  barked  somewhere  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  and  by  nine  o'clock  everybody 
was  in  bed.  I  had  spent  twelve  hours 
in  Grigsby's  Station  and  had  heard  no 
generous  thought  expressed  nor  seen  a 
single  kindly  deed  performed. 

In  the  memory  of  every  man  who 
gravitates  from  clean  dirt  to  paved 
streets  there  is  a  Grigsby's  Station,  and 
most  of  them  pretend  to  love  it.  I  don't. 
Frankly,  the  town  grinds  upon  my  soul 
and  maddens  me. 


GOING  BACK  TO  GRAND 
MOTHER'S. 

I  sometimes  think  there  comes  into 
the  life  of  a  man  no  more  depressing  in 
fluence  than  the  realization  that  he  is 
no  longer  a  boy.  The  consciousness  of 
youth  is  always  an  anchor  to  the  wind 
ward.  To  be  suddenly  cut  adrift  from 
one's  boyhood  makes  rough  sailing.  Not 
long  ago  I  went  for  a  brief  visit  to  the 
old  home  for  the  first  time  since  grand 
mother  died.  For  fifteen  years  the 
smooth  waters  of  grandmother's  house 
were  my  port  of  refuge.  It  was  the  one 
place  where  I  was  always  sure  of  a  hearty 
welcome,  rest,  quiet,  comfort,  and  the 
coddling  so  dear  to  a  masculine  heart. 

The  world  changed  a  good  deal  dur 
ing  those  fifteen  years,  and  I  saw  it  at 
many  different  angles.  But  neither  the 
face  nor  the  atmosphere  of  that  roomy, 
old-fashioned  twro- story  farmhouse  set 

(78) 


Going  Back  to  Grandmother  s.       79 

down  between  two  hills  ever  altered. 
It  was  always  restful  and  quiet  there, 
and  the  sound  of  a  footfall  could  be 
heard  anywhere  in  the  house.  One 
could  sit  on  the  front  porch  and  hear 
the  big  clock  ticking  in  the  dining-room, 
and  in  the  evenings  the  only  sounds 
that  freighted  to  and  fro  upon  the  air 
were  the  chirping  of  the  katydids  and 
the  occasional  bark  of  a  lonely  dog. 

Up  in  the  garret  of  the  old  farmhouse 
there  was  the  most  wonderful  array  of 
curious  things.  A  chest  of  drawers  that 
came  over  ahead  of  Cornwallis  stood  in 
the  half-light  against  the  north  wall,  and 
in  one  of  the  drawers  was  a  bundle  of 
old,  yellow,  faded  letters  written  home 
to  North  Carolina  by  a  captain  under 
"Mad  Anthony"  Wayne.  In  another 
drawer  were  a  lot  of  daguerreotypes  of 
curious -looking  people  in  impossible 
clothes.  An  old  hair  trunk  sat  under 
the  east  window,  and  above  it  hung  a 
sword  that  followed  General  Zachary 


80  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

Taylor  to  Mexico.  In  the  trunk,  folded 
carefully  on  top  of  a  miscellaneous  col 
lection  of  other  fabrics,  was  an  old  blue 
uniform,  a  hole  in  the  right  sleeve,  and 
the  sleeve  splashed  and  stained  with 
blood.  And  like  a  row  of  sentinels,  there 
hung  from  the  rafters  a  long  line  of  hoop- 
skirts,  derelict  and  abandoned  by  girls 
who  had  been  country  belles  in  the  six 
ties. 

I  did  not  go  often  to  grandmother's 
house.  Often  there  was  a  year,  some 
times  two  or  three  years,  between  my 
visits.  But  I  always  knew  I  could  take  my 
incipient  pneumonia  there  any  time  and 
have  it  fixed  up  with  a  mustard  plaster 
on  my  chest.  I  knew  grandmother  could 
tie  a  red-flannel  rag  around  my  sore 
throat  and  cure  it  overnight,  and  I  knew 
that  when  I  got  ready  to  go  away  the 
holes  in  my  hose  would  all  be  nicely 
darned.  It  never  mattered  how  late  I 
slept  in  the  morning.  The  coffee-pot  was 
always  simmering  gently  on  the  back  of 


Going  Back  to  Grandmother  s.       81 

the  stove  and  there  was  a  pan  of  hot  bis 
cuits  in  the  oven  when  I  came  down 
stairs.  It  never  mattered,  either,  how 
low  the  canned  fruit  ran — it  made  no  dif 
ference  that  a  late  frost  came  and  killed 
the  blossoms  on  the  trees — a  can  of  cher 
ries  was  always  set  away  against  my  com 
ing.  For  while  the  world  might  forget 
that  I  was  inordinately  fond  of  cherry 
pie,  grandmother  never  did. 

She  never  understood  me  in  the  later 
years  of  her  life,  because  we  traveled 
different  roads.  Much  that  I  did  seemed 
foolish  and  frivolous  to  her.  For  I  was 
at  the  age  when  pleasure  was  my  watch 
word,  and  gaudy  waistcoats,  cravats  and 
shirts  the  countersign  I  gave  at  the  places 
into  which  I  desired  entrance.  I  re 
member  she  once  chided  me  for  some 
frippery  cut  to  the  contour  of  a  shirt, 
which  I  was  wearing,  and  to  prove  her 
case  bought  at  the  little  country  town 
store  where  she  did  her  trading  a  shirt  for 
68  cents  and  presented  it  to  me.  She 


82  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

claimed  it  was  just  as  good  as  the  more 
expensive  garments  I  had  been  wearing; 
and  that  she  might  not  be  disappointed, 
I  put  it  on  and  wore  it  like  the  soldier 
whose  old  blue  uniform  lay  in  the  hair 
trunk  upstairs.  But,  farther  than  that, 
she  never  criticised  or  questioned  what  I 
did,  and  I  could  be  sure  of  her  sympathy, 
no  matter  what  happened. 

Not  long  ago  I  went  back.  I  knew 
that  grandmother  had  gone  the  short 
journey  from  the  home  to  which  she  went 
a  bride  in  1844  to  the  little  cemetery  on 
the  hillside,  but  that  was  the  least  I  had 
to  learn.  The  landscape  had  not 
changed,  but  it  no  longer  held  an  inter 
est  for  me.  The  faces  of  the  people  were 
familiar,  and  they  were  kind,  but  they 
could  not  dispel  the  feeling  of  loneliness 
that  gripped  my  heart,  nor  bring  back 
that  which  had  gone  out  of  my  life.  I 
walked  to  the  top  of  the  hill  overlooking 
the  old  house,  saw  alien  figures  about  the 
place,  and  turned  on  my  heel.  And  I 


Going  Back  to  Grandmother's.       83 

realized  when  I  drove  away  next  morning 
that  I  should  never  come — nor  care  to 
come — again.  I  knew,  too,  that  the  last 
link  that  bound  me  to  boyhood  had  been 
riven,  and  that  I  was  adrift  on  a  troubled 
sea. 


THE   PASSING  OF  "MUSKOGEE 
RED." 

"Muskogee  Red"  has  passed  on.  In 
a  little  Territory  town,  one  of  the  senti 
nels  set  by  civilization  at  the  outpost 
nearest  to  the  wilderness,  they  found  him 
one  morning  cold  in  death.  The  light 
had  failed  in  the  breath  of  a  December 
storm,  and  the  body  lay  unprotected  from 
its  fury.  The  coroner's  jury  gathered 
quickly,  rendered  a  verdict  of  death  from 
chronic  alcoholism,  and  the  undertaker 
hauled  the  body  to  a  convenient  potter's 
field.  There  were  no  flowers,  no  friends. 
The  solitude  and  loneliness  of  the  man's 
life  found  fitting  complement  in  its  hard, 
almost  brutal,  ending. 

"Muskogee  Red"  was  an  Irishman  by 
birth,  a  printer  by  trade.  He  had  the 
burr  of  his  country's  dialect  upon  his 
tongue,  its  map  graven  upon  his  face. 
Before  drink  benumbed  his  faculties  he 

(84) 


The  Passing  of  " Muskogee  Red'.'     85 

was  a  clever  fellow.  But  that  was  long 
ago.  Before  it  unsteadied  his  hand  he 
was  a  good  workman.  But  that  was 
also  long  ago.  For  twenty  years  pre 
ceding  his  death  he  had  but  one  passion, 
but  one  ambition.  And  that  was  whisky. 
A  drink  brought  content,  three  drinks 
happiness,  enough  to  fill  a  pint  flask  was 
Heaven.  Other  men  who  had  gone 
"Red's"  gait  gathered  themselves  to 
gether  as  they  began  to  slip  over  the  brow 
of  the  hill  toward  the  sunset.  They  mar 
ried,  reared  families,  grew  a  vine  and 
fig  tree,  and  turned  their  faces  toward 
reputable  ambition. 

But  "Red"  never  shifted.  Every 
vista  down  which  he  peered  had  liquor 
at  the  end.  He  wandered  about  over 
the  face  of  the  earth  scantily  clothed,  as 
scantily  fed,  and  with  nowhere  to  lay  his 
head.  He  never  knew  the  comforts  of  a 
home,  the  assurance  of  permanency,  or 
felt  the  soft  touch  of  a  woman  who  loved 
him.  Toward  the  end  his  own  craft 


86  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

shunned  him.  A  few  friends  he  kept 
through  it  all.  There  were  those  who 
could  look  far  enough  beyond  the  be 
numbing,  degrading  influence  of  drink  to 
see  the  warm-hearted,  fine-fibered  Irish 
man  it  had  led  astray.  They  gave  him 
pleasant  greeting  and  paid,  to  the  end, 
the  tribute  he  levied. 

The  writer  was  "Red's"  friend  for 
more  than  fifteen  years.  It  cost  him  an 
average  of  $5  a  year  in  tribute,  but  he 
never  grudged  the  money.  It  is  worth 
a  great  deal  more  than  $5  a  year  to  give 
any  fellow-being  the  exact  thing  he  needs 
to  make  him  happy.  "  Red  "  was  always 
in  conflict  with  the  police.  He  claimed 
to  hold  the  jail  and  calaboose  champion 
ship  of  the  country,  and  there  was  none 
to  dispute  his  title.  And  yet,  the  only 
entry  ever  set  against  his  name  on  the 
police  court  records  was  "drunk  and 
disorderly."  He  never  stole  nor  cheated, 
he  never  gambled,  and  he  assailed  neither 
the  honor  nor  virtue  of  woman. 


The  Passing  of  ' '  Muskogee  Red. "     87 

He  knew  he  was  going  as  he  did.  The 
last  time  the  writer  saw  him  was  on  a' 
cold  winter  evening  at  the  beginning  of 
the  year.  He  had  come  up  to  collect 
the  final  dividend  on  the  friendship  we 
bore  each  other.  And,  strange  to  say, 
he  was  sober.  "I'm  goin'  away,"  said 
he,  preliminary  to  his  always  masterly 
exposition  of  the  "touch."  "Likely  yez 
'11  never  see  me  agin.  I'm  gittin'  old,  and 
some  marnin'  they'll  find  me  stiff  and 
cold."  He  got  the  small  silver  he  asked 
for,  and  drifted  down  the  office  stairs  a 
derelict  on  the  tide  of  life,  too  far  gone 
in  ruin  and  decay  to  hold  out  a  hope  of 
salvage. 

"Muskogee  Red's"  life  had  no  saving 
grace  except  insofar  as  it  serves  a  warn 
ing.  He  frittered  it  away  in  utter  folly. 
But  there  is  this  about  it  to  make  one 
think :  if  it  seems  that  your  life  is  cast 
within  hard  lines,  compare  it  with 
"Muskogee  Red's."  For  forty  years  he 
fought  a  demon  appetite  that  brought 


88  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

him  nothing  but  misery  and  woe.  He 
never  had  a  home  or  reasonable  assurance 
of  a  coming  meal.  No  child  ever  laid  its 
soft  face  against  his  bearded  cheek.  No 
woman  ever  watched  for  him  at  the  win 
dow  or  listened  for  his  footsteps. 

And,  because  there  is  no  other  to  do 
it,  the  writer  drops  a  tear  on  his  neg 
lected  grave.  Here's  hoping  that  on  the 
Other  Side  there'll  be  no  mad  appetite 
to  drag  him  down,  no  folly  to  benumb 
the  best  that's  in  him. 


AN  APOSTROPHE  TO  THE 
RABBIT. 

If  I  detest  any  one  thing  more  than 
another,  that  thing  is  politics.  I  hate  the 
game  as  fiercely  as  a  Methodist  preacher 
hates  the  jack  of  spades.  And  yet, 
nearly  all  of  my  close  friends  are  in  pol 
itics,  and  I  have  been  closely  associated 
with  politics  and  politicians  all  my  life. 
Once  a  woman,  startled  into  speculation 
by  some  expression  of  disgust  that  had 
crossed  my  lips,  asked  why  I  detested  the 
game  in  which  so  many  men  find  their 
keenest  enjoyment.  I  promised  her  that 
one  day  I  should  write  a  specific  reply. 
And  that  is  the  justification  the  reader 
must  find  for  that  which  follows. 

I  hate  politics  because  it  makes  rabbits 
of  men.  It  turns  the  most  courageous 
into  spineless,  abject  imitations  of  their 
Creator.  A  politician  once  said  to  a 
friend  of  mine:  "I  like  Gaston,  and  I'd 

(89) 


90  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

like  to  be  friendly  with  him,  but  he  keeps 
me  at  arm's-length.  He  won't  warm  up 
to  me."  I  kept  him  at  arm's-length  be 
cause  politics  had  made  him  a  creeping, 
crawling  thing  afraid  of  his  own  shadow. 

Poke  Smart  is  my  best  friend.  I  would 
go  farther  and  carry  a  heavier  load  for 
him  than  any  other  man  I  know.  Poke 
used  to  be  the  bully  boy  of  his  town.  He 
was  a  natural  leader,  and  when  he  spoke 
they  all  danced  to  his  music.  Poke  did 
his  business  in  the  open,  and  one  knew 
always  where  to  find  him.  Before  he 
was  elected  to  office  he  had  the  fine  cour 
age  to  stand  always  for  the  thing  he  be 
lieved  to  be  right,  and  the  finer  courage 
to  admit  it  when  he  was  wrong.  Since 
Poke  was  elected  to  office  he  hasn't 
squeaked.  Every  opinion  he  has  ex 
pressed  has  been  spoken  in  a  whisper. 

Alfred  Farley  is  a  fine,  clean,  decent 
young  man  against  whom  nothing  can 
be  said.  I  like  him  immensely  because 
he  is  fine  and  clean  and  decent.  Upon 


An  Apostrophe  to  the  Rabbit.         91 

a  time  there  was  a  function  in  which 
Farley  and  I  participated.  Evening 
clothes  were  optional,  but  other  partici 
pants  in  the  function  got  together  and 
decided  that  it  was  the  thing  to  dress  for 
the  occasion.  Farley  was  approached  in 
the  matter.  "I  can't  do  it,  boys,"  he 
said.  "I'm  in  politics,  and  if  I  were  to 
wear  my  evening  clothes  the  fellows 
would  say  my  head  had  swelled,  and  it 
would  hurt  me." 

I  greatly  admire  the  Hon.  Benton 
Griggs.  Griggs  has  such  a  fine  mind, 
such  breadth  and  poise  and  strength  of 
character,  that  he  is  one  of  the  most 
likeable  fellows  I  know.  He  used  to  be 
so  frank  and  open  and  courageous  that 
association  with  him  gave  the  keenest 
sort  of  joy.  But  Griggs,  who  has  been 
in  politics  less  than  two  years,  has  com 
menced  to  trim.  He  talks  cautiously  and 
is  beginning  to  resort  to  platitude.  Some 
things  that  were  admirable  have  already 
gone  out  of  his  makeup.  In  five  years, 


92  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

if  he  sticks  to  politics,  his  spinal  vertebras 
will  be  gone  and  he  will  be  like  the  rest. 
I  take  it  that  if  I  were  in  politics,  I, 
too,  would  be  a  rabbit.  And  while  I 
have  only  a  humble  job  at  a  modest  wage, 
I  greatly  prefer  it  to  the  best  politics  has 
to  offer.  For  I  do  not  have  to  kowtow 
to  the  voters,  nor  cater  to  the  tiresome 
asses  who  attach  themselves  to  every 
political  caravan.  And  I  can  wear  what 
I  choose,  eat  what  I  please,  and  say  what 
I  like. 


THE  SMARTEST  BOY  IN 
SCHOOL. 

In  my  day  Geddes  Burgess  was  the 
smartest  boy  in  Grigsby's  Station.  He 
knew  more  than  any  of  the  other  boys 
and  he  told  it  better.  More  than  that, 
Geddes  Burgess  was  a  clean,  manly  boy. 
Doing  the  right  thing  seemed  instinctive 
with  him.  He  acquired  no  bad  habits,  was 
careful  of  his  associations,  and  showed 
both  industry  and  thrift.  We  were  good 
friends  always,  but  the  time  I  spent  be 
hind  the  livery  stable  learning  to  smoke 
Geddes  utilized  in  reading  history.  The 
summers  I  wasted  acquiring  a  profane 
vocabulary  and  learning  to  throw  an  in- 
shoot  Geddes  devoted  to  getting  in  touch 
with  the  dry -goods  business  in  the  em 
porium  of  Gage  &  Bro.  In  winter  he  was 
easily  the  best  student  in  school  and  the 
best  orator  that  appeared  at  the  debates 
of  the  literary  society.  By  the  time  he 

(93) 


94  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

was  twelve  years  old  people  had  begun 
to  point  to  him  and  say  there  was  a  boy 
who  would  make  his  mark. 

When  Geddes  finished  high  school  he 
went  away  to  college.  From  the  side 
window  of  the  Grigsby's  Station  Clarion, 
where  I  sat  perched  upon  a  high  stool 
setting  type,  I  watched  him  drive  away 
to  take  the  train  for  the  university  town, 
and  although  he  was  my  friend  there  was 
bitterness  and  envy  in  my  heart. 

Geddes  made  a  great  record  at  college 
and  was  a  big  man  in  his  class,  but  it 
seemed  not  to  affect  him  in  the  least.  He 
came  home  on  his  vacations  without  any  of 
the  swagger  or  undue  cranial  development 
which  is  usually  the  sign  of  the  college 
student  from  a  small  town.  There  was 
not  even  the  suggestion  of  the  university 
in  the  clothes  he  wore,  and  during  his 
summer  vacations  he  turned  his  hand  to 
any  odd  job  of  work  that  came  along. 

He  graduated  with  honor,  but  he  re 
turned  home  the  same  simple,  unaffected 


The  Smartest  Boy  in  School.         95 

Geddes  Burgess  I  had  known  from  child 
hood.  People  looked  up  to  him,  treated 
him  with  great  deference,  and  everybody 
predicted  that  he  would  cut  a  mighty 
wide  swath  in  affairs.  It  was  talked 
freely  that  he  would  some  day  be  a 
United  States  Senator  or  a  federal  judge, 
and  many  thought  even  the  presidency 
not  far  beyond  him. 

Geddes  decided  to  take  up  the  law, 
and  went  into  the  office  of  the  best  firm 
in  town.  About  the  time  he  settled  down 
to  the  law  I  took  out  a  traveling-card  and 
went  away  for  a  look  at  the  country  be 
yond.  I  heard  occasionally  of  Geddes  in 
the  two  years  that  elapsed  before  I  re 
turned.  He  was  fulfilling  every  predic 
tion  his  brilliant  youth  had  made,  and  was 
fast  developing  into  a  fine  lawyer.  But 
when  I  returned  home  finally  I  learned 
that  Geddes  had  quit  the  law  and  was 
doing  newspaper  work  in  a  neighboring 
city.  It  was  said  of  him  at  the  time  that 
he  was  the  most  promising  reporter  on  the 


96  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

staff  of  the  paper  for  which  he  worked, 
and  I  did  not  doubt  it. 

I  lost  track  of  Geddes  for  a  while,  and 
when  I  next  heard  of  him  he  was  in  the 
support  of  Kern,  the  great  tragedian,  and 
the  critics  said  he  was  the  best  young  ac 
tor  seen  in  the  West  for  years.  I  did  not 
locate  him  again  for  three  or  four  years, 
when  I  returned  to  Grigsby's  Station  one 
fall  to  find  him  running  for  State  Senator. 
People  said  Geddes  had  struck  his  gait  at 
last  and  that  he  would  land  high.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact  he  was  beaten  by  a 
few  votes  and  dropped  out  of  sight  again. 

I  met  Geddes  quite  unexpectedly  in 
St.  Louis  a  year  or  two  ago.  I  had  not 
seen  or  heard  of  him  for  six  or  seven 
years,  but  he  seemed  the  same  simple,  un 
affected  fellow  I  had  known  in  my  boy 
hood  days.  He  refused  an  invitation  to 
take  a  drink  and  declined  to  smoke,  but 
we  spent  a  pleasant  hour  together.  Inci 
dentally,  I  learned  that  he  was  working  as 
a  stenographer  in  a  wholesale  house  at 
$15  a  week. 


THE  OLD  DISTRICT  JUDGE. 

Of  all  the  folk  in  Grigsby's  Station  I 
liked  the  Judge  best.  There  may  have 
been  a  time  when  the  Judge  was  only 
an  "Hon."  or  plain  "Mister,"  but  he  has 
been  on  the  bench  so  long  that  I  can  not 
remember  it.  In  a  place  like  Grigsby's 
Station  whenever  a  man  begins  to  get  his 
head  above  the  level  of  his  neighbors 
one  hears  stories  "on"  him.  It  is  told 
about  that  he  got  his  property  by  cheat 
ing,  that  he  is  mean  to  his  family,  or 
that  he  is  stingy  and  drives  a  hard  bar 
gain.  Sometimes,  if  he  is  particularly 
prosperous  or  prominent,  they  tell 
"woman"  stories  on  him,  although  in  a 
small  town  like  Grigsby's  Station  very 
little  of  that  sort  of  thing  goes  on.  But, 
although  I  have  known  the  Judge  ever 
since  I  can  remember,  I  never  heard  him 
spoken  of  unkindly  or  disrespectfully. 

(97) 


98  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

I  have  always  thought  that  had  the 
Judge  pulled  himself  out  of  the  rut  of 
the  small  country  town  and  gone  to  a 
more  considerable  community  he  would 
have  been  recognized  as  a  very  great  man. 
He  is  certainly  learned  in  the  law  and 
he  has  the  soul  of  a  poet  and  the  eye 
and  understanding  of  an  artist.  But  he 
stuck  to  the  little  white  house  with  the 
green  shutters,  and  for  more  than  twenty 
years  has  sat  in  the  dusty,  dingy  court 
room  in  a  splint-bottomed  chair  and  be 
hind  a  worn  desk  the  top  of  which  is  cov 
ered  with  oilcloth  of  the  sort  careful 
housewives  lay  upon  their  kitchen  floors. 

The  only  time  the  Judge  ever  criticised 
me  was  upon  an  occasion  when  I  appeared 
in  Grigsby's  Station  wearing  a  fancy  vest 
very  delicate  in  texture  and  very  light 
in  color.  "I  hate  to  see  a  man  wearing 
a  thing  like  that,"  he  said  when  I  met 
him  in  front  of  the  postoffice.  So  I  went 
home  and  buried  the  offending  garment 
in  the  bottom  of  my  suit-case.  Sarto- 


The  Old  District  Judge.  99 

rially,  the  Judge  has  always  been  the 
despair  of  his  wife  and  daughters.  His 
only  condescension  to  style  is  a  collar  and 
tie  worn  upon  occasions  when  he  happens 
to  be  holding  court  or  attending  a  sol 
diers'  reunion. 

Once  the  Judge  set  out  by  rail  from 
Grigsby's  Station  to  Birmington,  a  neigh 
boring  town.  A  new  conductor  hap 
pened  to  be  on  the  "run"  that  day,  and 
he  promptly  took  up  the  Judge's  pass 
and  collected  full  fare.  "That  damn 
tramp  back  there,"  he  remarked  to  the 
brakeman  as  he  went  forward,  "was 
a- try  in'  to  ride  on  Judge  Lee's  pass."  On 
another  occasion  the  Judge's  trousers  had 
reached  the  stage  where  further  patching 
was  impossible.  So  Mrs.  Judge  thrust 
the  price  into  his  hand  and  bade  him  go 
uptown  and  buy  a  new  pair.  The  Judge 
set  off  obediently  enough.  He  came 
back  in  an  hour  or  two  with  a  bundle 
under  his  arm,  and  unwrapping  it  with 
that  pleasurable  pride  which  always 


100  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

precedes  the  springing  of  a  surprise,  dis 
played  two  new  books. 

I  have  said  that  had  the  judge  gone 
to  any  considerable  community  he  would 
have  been  recognized  as  a  very  great  man. 
But  perhaps,  after  all,  he  chose  wisely. 
In  the  little  house  with  the  green  shutters 
every  picture  and  every  decoration  is  an 
association  and  every  book  an  old  fa 
miliar  friend.  About  the  house  there  is 
the  green  grass  and  the  trees.  Away  to 
the  west  there  is  the  river,  and  there  are 
the  tints  in  the  sky-line  to  be  watched 
and  the  drowsy  hum  of  the  country  town 
to  lull  one  to  rest  and  quiet. 

And  so  the  Judge's  life  has  run  on  like 
a  gently  flowing  river  between  green 
banks  and  under  blue  skies.  He  has 
peace  and  quiet  and  every  neighbor  is^his 
friend.  The  other  life,  the  life  he  might 
have  led  had  he  chosen,  has  its  greater 
victories,  but  it  also  carries  its  scars. 
Perhaps  the  Judge  chose  wisely,  after  all. 


THE  OPOLIS  DAILY  SUN. 

Somebody  once  asked  me  to  tell  the 
most  interesting  episode  in  my  experi 
ence.  I  think  now  that  it  was  my  at 
tempt  to  give  the  town  of  Opolis  a  met 
ropolitan  daily  newspaper.  Opolis  was  a 
little  shack  town  on  the  edge  of  a  prairie. 
They  claimed  a  population  of  10,000  peo 
ple  and  had  the  figures  to  prove  the  claim, 
but  I  have  always  thought  they  counted 
the  tombstones  in  the  burying-ground 
and  the  names  on  the  old  hotel  registers 
in  making  the  compilation. 

I  lit  in  the  town  one  day  along  toward 
the  crimpy  end  of  an  unpleasant  autumn, 
without  money  and  without  a  job.  Al 
though  the  town  had  already  three  daily 
and  two  weekly  newspapers,  I  found  that 
another  daily  was  badly  needed.  There 
was  much  dissatisfaction  writh  the  press 
of  the  community.  The  fellows  who  were 
running  newspapers  in  Opolis  were,  it 

(101) 


102  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

seemed,  slow  and  non- progressive.  I 
gleaned  from  sundry  conversations  with 
real-estate  agents,  lawyers  and  probable 
candidates  for  office  at  the  next  election, 
that  what  the  town  really  needed  was  a 
bright,  clever  young  fellow  \vho  could 
throw  vim  and  snap  into  his  work. 

As  my  entire  capital  at  that  time  con 
sisted  of  vim  and  snap,  I  concluded  I  had 
found  a  lucrative  field  for  its  investment, 
and  having  neither  money  nor  job  I  con 
cluded  to  start  the  fourth  daily  news 
paper  in  the  town.  Before  I  took  the 
final  step  I  went  around  to  see  the  slow, 
non-progressive  fellows  who  were  run 
ning  the  sheets  already  established.  I 
intimated  to  each  of  them  in  turn  that 
if  he  would  give  me  a  job  at  $10  a  week  I 
would  drop  my  hastily  formed  plan  to 
drive  him  out  of  business,  but  the  "stall" 
wouldn't  fight  and  I  went  ahead  with  my 
plans  for  a  bright,  snappy,  metropolitan 
newspaper. 

I  knew  a  man  in  a  near-by  city  who 


The  Opolis  Daily  Sun.  103 

had  a  printing  plant  lying  idle,  so  I  bor 
rowed  the  necessary  railroad  fare  and 
went  down  and  leased  it.  On  the  same 
trip  I  touched  a  friend  for  $25  to  pay 
freight  on  the  plant  and  for  incidental 
expenses.  When  I  finally  got  my  mate 
rial  set  up  in  a  room  for  the  rent  of  which 
I  had  stood  the  landlord  off,  I  had  $4 
left.  A  dollar  of  this  I  used  as  advance 
payment  on  a  stove  for  which  I  had 
gigged  a  second-hand  dealer,  another  dol 
lar  was  expended  on  coal,  and  a  third  went 
into  the  cash  drawer  of  a  retail  dealer 
in  lamps,  kerosene  and  sponges.  The  re 
mainder  of  the  nest-egg  was  deposited 
with  the  barber  and  haberdasher  in  an 
effort  to  bring  my  personal  appearance 
up  to  the  standard  required  of  newspaper 
proprietors. 

On  the  morning  of  the  day  of  the  first 
issue  of  the  Opolis  Daily  Sun  I  had  hope 
in  my  heart  and  ten  cents  in  my  pocket. 
The  white  paper  for  the  first  two  or  three 
issues  of  the  Sun  was  borrowed  from  one 


104  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

of  the  competing  sheets  upon  the  rep 
resentation  that  the  carload  I  had  or 
dered  had  not  yet  arrived.  I  may  as 
well  say  here  that  the  particular  carload 
of  paper  in  question  hasn't  reached  me 
yet. 

I  had  gathered  together  a  rattling  good 
staff.  One  indication  of  the  weakness  of 
humanity  is  that  every  man  who  gets  to 
know  me  well  wants  to  work  for  me.  It 
was  an  all- 'round  staff,  too.  Every  man 
on  the  paper  could  write  editorial  or  news, 
set  type,  run  a  press,  or  solicit  adver 
tising.  There  were  seven  of  us  all  told, 
and  I  shall  always  believe  it  the  best  ag 
gregation  of  newspaper  talent  ever  gath 
ered  under  one  canvas  in  a  town  the  size 
of  Opolis. 

In  order  to  avoid  embarrassment  on 
Saturday  nights,  I  made  the  Sun  a  coop 
erative  concern.  I  was  to  have  the  last 
word  in  matters  of  policy,  but  the  profits 
of  the  enterprise  were  to  be  shared 
equally.  Whenever  I  get  to  thinking  I 


The  Opolis  Daily  Sun.  105 

know  nothing  about  business  I  recall  the 
masterly  manner  in  which  I  evaded  pay 
day  on  the  Opolis  Daily  Sun  and  am 
reassured. 

We  started  out  with  a  shriek  and  a 
hurrah.  The  first  issue  of  the  paper  was 
made  on  a  Monday,  and  the  city  editor 
was  thrashed  by  an  indignant  citizen 
within  thirty  minutes  after  the  Tuesday 
issue  was  on  the  street.  I  had  trouble 
with  the  owner  of  the  theater  on  Thurs 
day,  and  only  escaped  a  fight  by  putting 
up  a  strong  bluff.  The  advertising  man 
ager  was  ordered  out  of  the  biggest  store 
in  town  Saturday  because  of  a  "hot" 
story,  incriminating  the  proprietor,  un 
loosed  by  the  police  reporter  in  an  effort 
to  be  funny. 

The  Sun  sold  like  twenty-dollar  bills 
at  reduced  prices  on  the  streets.  Some 
times  we  disposed  of  as  many  as  100 
copies  a  day,  but  somehow  not  a  great 
deal  of  money  came  in  at  the  gate.  On 
the  first  Saturday  night  there  was  $1.30 


106  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

in  the  cash  drawer  after  the  incidental 
expenses  had  been  paid,  and  after  I  had 
divided  it  pro  rata  we  all  went  out  and 
took  a  shave  and  a  sack  of  smoking- 
tobacco. 

The  Sun  Publishing  Company  ran  along 
for  a  month  with  little  annoyance  from 
creditors.  Occasionally,  on  Saturday 
nights,  the  dividend  was  forty  or  fifty 
cents  apiece  and  the  company  enjoyed 
the  luxury  of  a  cigar.  One  week  the 
business  manager  insisted  on  getting  a 
shave,  a  haircut  and  a  shampoo,  and  it 
cut  the  profits  down  to  ten  cents  apiece. 
On  another  occasion  the  foreman,  who 
had,  as  was  his  wont,  fallen  in  love,  in 
sisted  on  spending  the  entire  week's  earn 
ings  for  carnations,  and  no  dividend 
could  be  declared.  This  caused  some 
hard  feeling  on  the  part  of  his  fellow- 
stockholders,  and  was  really  the  begin 
ning  of  the  end. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  month  the  ad 
vertising  collections  were  insufficient  to 


The  Opolis  Daily  Sun.  107 

pay  more  than  a  small  installment  on 
our  combined  hotel  bills,  and  the  land 
lords  began  to  give  us  the  stony  stare. 
The  Boniface  at  the  Astor  House  had  the 
bad  taste  to  remonstrate  with  the  man 
ager  of  circulation.  "Hell!"  said  the 
manager  of  circulation,  who  was  a  some 
what  profane  man,  "you've  got  no  kick 
coming.  You're  only  feeding  two  of  us. 
The  autocrat  over  at  the  St.  James  is 
keeping  the  coyotes  from  the  door  of  the 
editor,  the  business  manager,  and  the 
foreman.  You're  really  not  doing  your 
share." 

By  the  middle  of  the  second  month  the 
cordiality  of  the  people  had  not  only  con 
gealed,  but  it  had  reached  a  thickness  of 
fully  sixteen  inches.  The  ice  with  which 
the  town  encased  itself  against  our  ap 
proach  broke  all  records  for  that  latitude. 
Everything  we  ordered  began  to  come 
C.  O.  D.,  and  our  position  at  the  ho 
tels  became  absolutely  untenable.  So  I 
rented  a  suite  of  two  rooms  furnished 


108  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

with  a  couple  of  beds,  three  chairs,  a 
kerosene  lamp  and  a  combination  stove. 
The  foreman's  mother  sent  him  $5  for  a 
birthday  present  and  we  bought  a  coffee 
pot,  a  frying-pan  and  a  miscellaneous  as 
sortment  of  tinware,  and  began  doing  our 
own  cooking. 

I  made  arrangements  for  a  week's 
credit  at  a  butcher-shop  and  a  grocery 
store  and  we  got  along  fairly  well,  the 
advertising  man  doing  the  cooking  and 
the  balance  of  us  taking  turns  at  washing 
the  dishes,  until  the  butcher  and  grocer 
called  our  bluff  the  following  Monday. 
By  that  time  everybody  was  "next." 
Creditors  began  to  multiply  and  harass 
us.  I  went  to  and  from  the  office  through 
alleys  and  by  the  way  of  unfrequented 
streets  in  order  to  avoid  meeting  people 
we  owed.  We  lived  literally  from  hand 
to  mouth.  Frequently  we  had  money 
sufficient  to  buy  baker's  bread,  butter, 
and  coffee.  Occasionally,  we  had  meat. 
Sometimes  we  were  down  to  baker's 
bread  and  mighty  little  of  that. 


The  Opolis  Daily  Sun.  109 

The  greatest  office  expense  was  white 
paper,  and  we  bought  and  borrowed  un 
til  the  limit  was  reached.  One  of  our 
competitors  had  gotten  out  a  rather 
elaborate  Christmas  edition.  He  ran  a 
weekly  publication  and  used  what  is 
known  in  newspaper  offices  as  a  patent 
inside.  For  his  Christmas  edition  he  had 
ordered  a  larger  supply  of  patent  insides 
than  his  circulation  warranted,  and  the 
superfluous  Christmas  stories  and  "Peace 
and  Good  Will"  poetry  was  piled  in  the 
rear  end  of  his  office,  one  side  blank. 
The  business  manager,  who  had  a  good 
head,  deftly  lifted  the  rear  window  of  the 
competing  office  one  night  and  stole  the 
pile  of  patent  insides.  It  gave  us  a  bad 
name  in  the  town  when  the  story  came 
out,  but  it  deferred  the  obituary  notice 
of  the  Daily  Sun  several  days. 

We  made  luncheon  one  day  on  water 
poured  over  the  remains  of  the  coffee 
with  which  we  had  girded  up  our  loins  at 
breakfast.  "You'll  have  to  do  some- 


110  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

thing,"  I  said  to  the  business  manager 
that  afternoon  when  the  dinner  hour  be 
gan  to  stare  us  in  the  face.  "If  this  Dr. 
Tanner  business  keeps  up  another  day 
we'll  have  to  suspend."  The  foreman 
had  been  growling  all  afternoon  and 
threatening  to  jump  to  "Chi,"  and  there 
was  every  indication  of  a  general  storm. 

The  business  manager's  name  was 
Grim.  Poor  fellow!  He  crossed  the 
dark  river  by  the  laudanum  route  a  year 
or  two  later  because  the  girl  he  loved 
could  not  care.  Grim  went  out  deject 
edly.  He  came  back  just  at  dusk,  an 
hour  or  two  later,  and  laid  a  quarter  on 
my  desk.  "I  had  to  do  it!  I  had  to  do 
it!"  he  kept  saying  to  himself  as  he 
walked  away.  "Had  to  do  what?"  I 
asked.  "I  robbed  a  little  boy  who  was 
going  after  meat,"  replied  Grim  with  a 
sob  in  his  voice. 

The  end  came  suddenly  the  following 
forenoon.  Along  about  eleven  o'clock 
the  close-fisted  miser  from  whom  we 


The  Op oli s  Daily  Sun.  Ill 

rented  our  apartments  sent  word  that 
we  could  neither  occupy  them  nor  re 
move  our  personal  effects  until  we  paid 
the  rent.  The  bill  was  $6  :  it  might  just 
as  well  have  been  $6,000.  "The  jig  is 
up,"  I  said  to  the  Sun  Publishing  Com 
pany  when  I  read  the  miser's  note.  "I'll 
go  out  and  sell  the  Sun,  or  give  it  away." 
Around  the  corner  I  met  the  idle  eldest 
offspring  of  the  Episcopal  rector.  He 
had  been  pestering  me  for  a  job  as  a  re 
porter,  and  tackled  me  again  for  the  fifth 
time  in  three  days.  "I'll  sell  you  my 
interest  in  the  plant,  the  good-will  and 
the  business  for  $10,"  said  I.  "If  I  can 
borrow  the  money  from  mother,  I'll  take 
it,"  he  replied  after  a  moment  of  becom 
ing  hesitation.  The  offspring  came  back 
in  a  half -hour  with  a  $10  bill  and  the 
deal  was  closed.  The  members  of  the 
Sun  Publishing  Company  put  on  their 
coats  and  went  out  to  a  quick-lunch 
counter.  The  next  morning  the  four  re 
maining  members  who  had  been  able  to 


112  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

successfully  conceal  themselves  from  the 
brakeman  during  the  long  night,  disen 
tangled  themselves  from  a  car  attached 
to  a  fast  freight  in  the  Burlington  yards, 
Chicago,  and  the  company  dissolved. 


BROTHER   BILL. 

I  am  not  very  accommodating  or  oblig 
ing,  and  as  a  result  I  am  somewhat  un 
popular.  A  good  many  people  say  I  am 
riot  only  grouchy,  but  that  I  am  also 
mean  and  selfish.  If  I  have  those  char 
acteristics  they  may  be  attributed  to  my 
brother,  Bill.  Bill  is  one  of  those  whole- 
souled,  good-hearted  fellows  who  is  every 
body's  friend.  When  Bill  was  a  boy  and 
went  to  Sunday  school  he  never  brought 
fewer  than  four  boys  home  to  dinner  with 
him.  Frequently  he  brought  eight.  The 
result  was  that  by  the  time  Bill's  guests 
had  satisfied  their  hunger  there  never 
was  any  fried  chicken  or  cherry  pie  left 
for  the  members  of  the  family. 

Bill's  habits  did  not  change  when  he 
grew  up,  and  the  house  was  always  full 
of  company  of  his  inviting.  The  guests 
occupied  the  house  and  the  family 
camped  around  in  the  woodshed  and  the 

(113) 


114  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

barn.  When  any  of  his  friends  needed 
money  he  went  out  and  borrowed  it  for 
them.  He  was  always  paying  interest  on 
two  or  three  notes  at  the  bank  given  for 
money  to  help  some  friend  out  of  a  hole. 
When  one  was  going  anywhere  with  Bill 
the  start  had  to  be  made  the  night  be 
fore,  for  Bill  always  had  to  stop  and  shake 
hands  with  so  many  people  that  he  in 
variably  missed  the  train. 

Bill  is  a  erackerjack  in  his  line  and 
makes  a  good  deal  of  money,  but  his  next 
month's  salary  is  always  carrying  a 
ninety-day  mortgage.  He  married  into 
a  large  family  in  order  that  he  might 
have  opportunity  to  entertain  a  lot  of 
relatives  all  the  time.  One  night  last 
winter  he  met  a  lodge  brother  who  flagged 
him  with  the  signal  of  distress.  The 
weather  was  cold,  and  Bill  took  him  to 
the  shelter  of  his  own  vine  and  fig  tree. 
The  weather  continued  inclement,  and 
upon  his  host's  pressing  invitation  the 
lodge  brother  remained  two  or  three 


Brother  Bill,  115 


days.  One  morning  Bill  arose  to  feed 
the  furnace  and  discovered  that  his 
guest  had  gone  without  the  formality 
of  saying  "good-by."  Coincident  with 
his  leave-taking  Bill's  overcoat  and  $40 
which  he  had  been  carrying  to  pay  the 
rent  disappeared.  The  same  day  Bill 
had  a  notice  from  the  bank  calling  his 
attention  to  the  fact  that  a  casual  ac 
quaintance  whose  paper  he  had  indorsed 
for  $300  had  defaulted  payment. 

Bill's  house  is  full  of  useless  books,  rugs, 
antique  clocks  and  other  debris  bought 
because  he  is  so  polite  and  accommodat 
ing  that  he  hates  to  turn  down  the  agents 
who  call  on  him.  Bill's  picture  is  in 
every  biographical  record  and  "Promi 
nent  Men  of  the  West"  volume  ever  is 
sued  west  of  Denver.  It  isn't  egotism  on 
his  part,  for  he  is  really  a  very  modest 
fellow,  but  he  is  so  kind  and  "house- 
broke"  that  he  hasn't  the  heart  to  turn 
a  canvasser  down. 

Old    Bill    will    read    this    sketch    and 


116  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

laugh.  Then  he  will  start  down  the 
street,  turning  aside  every  few  moments 
to  shake  hands  with  somebody  or  to  make 
a  little  loan  to  some  friend.  When  he 
returns  accompanied  by  a  guest  for  din 
ner  he  will  urge  his  wife  to  write  a  letter 
to  some  of  her  girl  friends  or  some  rela 
tive  extending  an  invitation  to  make 
them  a  visit. 

Bill  is  popular.  If  he  ran  for  office  he 
could  probably  get  every  vote  in  his 
town.  But  he  will  never  have  a  dollar 
so  long  as  there  is  a  chance  to  give  it 
away  and  his  nose  will  always  be  on  the 
grindstone.  I  am  not  popular,  but  I 
have  seen  so  many  instances  of  Bill's  as- 
sininitv  that  I  don't  mind  it. 


HER  FIRST  REAL  TRAGEDY. 

The  first  of  life's  real  tragedies  has 
come  to  Patty  Stewart.  For  Patty  has 
lost  forever  the  dearest  illusion  childhood 
holds. 

At  school  one  day  just  before  last 
Christmastide  a  group  of  playmates, 
older  in  years  and  wiser  in  material 
things,  took  Santa  Claus  from  Patty  and 
left  her  nothing. 

Taking  Santa  Claus  from  a  child  is 
theft  complicated  with  extreme  cruelty. 
For  the  moment  one  might  as  well  take 
from  the  Christian  his  God. 

Around  the  Santa  Claus  myth  are 
builded  the  most  beautiful  things  in  the 
life  of  a  child.  The  real  sweetness  and 
light  of  this  existence  lie  principally  in 
its  illusions. 

Reality  is  often  harsh,  and  has,  always, 
acute  angles  and  inharmonious  grouping. 
Illusion  is  as  soft  as  the  south-wind  and 

(117) 


118  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

as    delicately    tinted    as    the    breath    of 
spring. 

They  say  childhood  is  untroubled,  but 
the  days  that  are  to  come  will  bring  to 
Patty  Stewart  no  tragedy  so  keen  as  that 
precipitated  by  the  blundering  tongue 
which  tore  her  faith  in  Santa  Claus  from 
its  moorings. 


THE  PRINCE  BUSINESS. 

Nearly  every  unattached  girl  in  this 
town  is  looking  for  a  Prince.  Which  is 
all  right.  Nothing  inferior  to  a  Prince 
in  the  matter  of  title  is  good  enough  for 
any  girl. 

Where  the  unattached  girl  falls  into 
error  is  not  in  the  matter  of  taste,  but  in 
matter  of  geography.  She  believes  the 
only  place  she  can  meet  a  Prince  is  at  the 
seaside,  in  the  mountains,  or  at  the  home 
of  a  girl  friend  in  some  other  town. 
There  is  always  too  great  a  disposition  to 
overlook  the  members  of  the  royal  family 
right  here  at  home.  The  Princes  are 
distributed  pretty  equally,  and  one  finds 
them  quite  as  plentiful  in  Leavenworth, 
Des  Moines  or  Peoria  as  they  are  at  the 
seaside  or  in  the  mountains. 

The  idea  that  Princes  are  restricted  to 
certain  localities,  or  that  the  home-grown 
sort  is  inferior  to  the  imported  variety, 

(119) 


120  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

is  error.  No  matter  where  she  finds  him, 
the  girl  will  discover,  in  time,  that  her 
Prince  smells  of  tobacco  and  is  profane 
when  occasion  warrants.  She  will  find 
that  he  knows  the  different  brands  of 
intoxicants  well  enough  to  call  them  by 
their  first  names,  and  that  he  changes  his 
hosiery  reluctantly.  And  she  will  also 
find  that  in  the  privacy  of  his  apartments 
he  prefers  an  old  pair  of  slippers  and  his 
shirtsleeves  to  the  royal  robes. 

If  he  doesn't,  the  chances  are  that  he 
isn't  a  Prince. 

There  is  just  as  much  idiocy,  just  as 
many  split  infinitives,  and  just  as  much 
that  is  reprehensible  among  the  men  who 
frequent  the  drawing-rooms  along  Fifth 
avenue  as  there  is  among  those  for  whom 
the  shades  in  the  front  parlors  in  Topeka 
are  drawn  on  Sunday  evenings. 

No  town  or  community  has  a  copy 
right  on  royal  blood. 


MY  FRIEND  THE  BOY. 

I. 

My  friend  the  boy,  who  has  been  away, 
is  in  love.  He  talks  a  great  deal  about 
the  Girl — calls  her  a  Queen,  and  wonders 
what  she  can  see  in  him.  The  gang  was 
"on,"  and  when  he  showed  up  in  the  lo 
cal  room  they  began  to  josh  him  about 
the  Girl,  but  he  said  he  couldn't  talk 
about  her  before  a  crowd.  And  the 
gang,  appreciating  his  delicacy,  dropped 
it.  After  dinner  the  boy  and  I  drilled  over 
to  the  State  House  grounds  and  lopped 
down  under  the  trees.  And  then  he  told 
me  all  about  it. 

She's  a  Baltimore  girl,  a  junior  in  col 
lege,  and  her  folks  live  in  one  of  the  old- 
fashioned  houses  that  stand  back  from 
the  street.  Once,  when  the  torrent  of 
humanity  leaped  and  swirled  around  a 
corner,  they  met  face  to  face,  and  then  the 
torrent  separated  and  left  them  standing 

(121) 


122  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

alone — just  he  and  she  in  all  the  wide, 
wide  world  alone.  The  boy  told  me  this 
not  in  these  words,  for  all  this  clatter 
is  mere  figure  of  speech,  but  he  told  me 
that  although  he  felt  quite  unworthy  of 
her  he  hoped  some  day  to  have  her  with 
him  for  all  time. 

fie  told  me  more — much  more.  How 
his  love  had  brought  soft,  exquisite  col 
ors  into  his  life,  and  shaped  his  determi 
nation  and  strengthened  his  manliness. 
But  this  is  not  especially  interesting— 
the  mere  story,  I  mean.  I  tell  it  only 
because  humanity  likes  to  touch  the  hand 
of  a  man  who  has  found  his  great  joy. 
For  when  the  torrent  swirled  and  sep 
arated  and  left  them  standing  face  to 
face,  the  sweetest,  finest,  most  comforting 
thing  the  boy  will  ever  knowr  came  into 
his  life. 

And  if  it  lasts — if  the  girl  proves  true, 
and  the  boy  doesn't  forget— -it  isn't  worth 
while  to  worry  about  the  boy  any  more. 
The  game  may  go  against  him,  the  wheel 


My  Friend  the  Boy.  123 

stop  on  the  red  when  he  plays  the  black, 
but  nothing  will  matter  much.  For  he 
has  now  all  that  is  really  worth  striving 
and  fretting  for.  And  if  it  goes  away 
there  will  come  in  its  place  a  pain  as  bitter 
as  his  joy  was  keen.  And  he  will  stand 
alone  groping  for  something  he  cannot 
find,  crying  for  something  that  will  not 
come,  his  mental  faculties  so  numbed  by 
the  pain  that  everything  else  will  seem 
shriveled  and  trivial.  We  may  not  all 
find  and  keep  this  treasure.  There  are 
blanks  in  this  lottery  of  joy.  If  mine  is 
a  blank  I'd  like  to  stand  close  to  the 
boy — this  boy  or  some  other  boy — who 
has  drawn  a  capital  prize. 

II. 

My  friend  the  boy  is  going  back  to 
Baltimore  to-day.  Back  to  the  old-fash 
ioned  house  that  stands  away  from  the 
street  and  to  the  Girl  who  is  watching  at 
the  window.  To  the  boy  it  will  be 
farther  to  Washington  and  Baltimore  by 


124  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

fast  train  than  it  used  to  be  from  Omaha 
to  Sutter's  Mill  by  ox  team.  The  Lake 
Shore  Limited  will  crawl  along  like  the 
last  spring  wagon  in  a  funeral  procession, 
and  the  B.  &  O.  Royal  will  make  a  land 
terrapin  look  like  a  streak  of  chain  light 
ning.  Between  Chicago  and  New  York 
the  hours  will  seem  a  day  long ;  between 
New  York  and  Baltimore  every  minute 
will  be  an  eternity. 

The  boy  hasn't  seen  Her  since  June. 
All  summer  and  fall  he  worked  away  in 
a  stuffy  little  office  in  a  Kansas  tank 
town,  where  the  wind  blew  the  naked 
dirt  in  great  clouds  up  and  down  the 
main  street  and  the  smoke  of  smelters 
clogged  the  atmosphere.  Under  the  tin 
roof  above  his  head  it  was  always  hot  and 
dry  or  hot  and  sticky.  Most  of  the  peo 
ple  of  the  tank  town  were  not  his  kind 
and  their  diversions  did  not  appeal  to 
him.  But  the  boy  didn't  mind.  For  he 
was  looking  forward  to  Her.  All  through 
the  long  days  of  the  summer  and  early 


My  Friend  the  Boy.  125 

fall  Love  sat  smiling  across  his  desk.  It 
caressed  his  forehead  with  cooling  touch 
as  he  sank  to  slumber,  and  it  bade  him  a 
cheery  "good-morning"  from  his  dresser 
mirror  when  he  tied  his  cravat  next  day. 
This  is  what  Bill,  the  police  repor 
ter,  calls  "using  the  tremolo  stop."  Bill 
doesn't  care  much  for  the  tremolo  stop, 
but  I  do.  It  is  the  sweetening  of  this  life 
—the  one  essential  flavoring  of  the  things 
that  are.  And  because  I  have  no  Great 
Joy  of  my  own  I  am  going  to  get  up  be 
side  the  boy  when  he  goes  out  this  winter 
to  ride  the  air  or  bridle  the  clouds.  For 

"  Of  the  world's  great  things  but  four  there  are, — 
Women  and  horses,  love  and  war." 

III. 

My  friend  the  boy  is  back  from  Balti 
more,  and  he  brings  the  best  sort  of  news 
about  the  girl  who  lives  in  the  old-fash 
ioned  house  that  stands  back  from  the 
street.  It  seems  that  she  has  promised 
to  marry  the  boy,  and  for  him  there  are 


126  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

roses  blooming  in  the  garden,  the  lilacs 
are  out  in  the  front  yard  and  the  pan- 
sies  are  peeping  through  the  beds  border 
ing  the  path  to  the  gate. 

Down  in  a  little  town  in  Kansas  the 
boy  and  I  slept  together  the  other  night, 
and  he  told  me  the  Whole  Story.  He 
might  have  been  talking  yet,  but  the 
traveling  gentleman  in  No.  5  adjoining 
kicked  on  the  noise  along  about  4  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  we  had  to  quit.  The 
traveling  man  told  the  porter  confiden 
tially  that  he  hadn't  had  a  wink  of  sleep 
all  night  and  it  looked  as  though  he  wasn't 
going  to  get  any. 

This  is  the  first  girl  the  boy  ever  loved, 
and  of  course  he  made  a  mess  of  it. 
There  was,  it  seems,  another  "lobster" 
hanging  round,  and  the  boy  was  on  the 
anxious  seat.  He  was  so  anxious  that 
he  botched  his  work  during  the  day  and 
couldn't  sleep  at  night.  Finally,  he  went 
over,  determined  to  settle  matters.  He 
couldn't  get  his  courage  up,  and  went 


My  Friend  the  Boy.  127 

home  humiliated  and  dissatisfied.  He 
tried  it  again,  with  the  same  result.  On 
the  third  essay  he  blundered  through  it, 
and  found  that  his  goal  line  had  never 
been  in  danger. 

And  now  the  boy  is  planning  harder 
than  ever  for  the  future,  and  he  thinks 
he  can  save  about  $500  this  summer, 
anyway.  I  hope  the  boy's  dreams  may 
all  come  true.  But  I  am  eight  years 
older  than  he,  and  I  know  some  things 
he  has  not  learned.  I  know  he  may  wake 
some  morning  to  find  grief  sitting  in  a 
chair  by  his  bedside  and  trouble  peering 
over  the  footboard.  Meanwhile  here's 
hoping — hoping  that  fate  will  step  so 
lightly  in  his  presence  that  he'll  never 
wake  up. 


THE   GIRL  IN   "GOOGLY-GOO." 

The  Girl  sifted  wearily  into  the  res 
taurant  and  sat  down  across  the  table 
from  the  Man  who  was  eating  a  midnight 
lunch.  The  feather  in  her  hat  was 
broken  and  awry,  her  hair  was  in  dis 
order,  and  her  jacket  was  pitifully  cheap 
and  coarse.  There  was  a  haggard,  de 
jected  look  on  her  face-— a  face  that 
might  have  played  havoc  with  men's 
hearts  under  different  circumstances.  The 
Man  recognized  her :  she  had  stood  fourth 
from  the  left  lower  entrance  in  the  chorus 
of  the  "Googly-Goo"  company  at  the 
theater  that  night. 

Meanwhile,  other  members  of  the  cho 
rus  had  sifted  as  wearily  in,  and  had  sat 
down  to  the  various  tables  about  the 
room.  They  were  typical  of  their  kind, 
which  is  to  say  that  they  were  poorly 
dressed  and  unattractive  off  the  stage. 
Some  were  talking  loudly,  but  most  of 

(128) 


The  Girl  in  ' '  Googly  -  Goo. "       129 

them  were  quiet  and  unobtrusive.  The 
Man  knew  the  kind  and  gave  them  little 
heed,  but  there  was  something  in  the  face 
of  the  Girl  opposite  that  attracted  and 
held  his  sympathy. 

She  was  a  little  thing:  she  could  not 
have  been  more  than  nineteen  or  twenty, 
and  for  all  her  cheap,  tawdry  clothes  and 
the  slovenly  hair  there  was  about  her  the 
indefinable  touch  which  only  good  breed 
ing  can  give.  It  may  be  that  the  Girl 
recognized  the  sympathy  in  the  Man's 
face.  It  may  be  that  the  reserve  which 
dammed  the  flood-gates  of  her  soul  had 
finally  given  away  before  the  torrent  of 
her  woe.  At  any  rate,  she  looked  across 
the  table  and  asked  the  man  if  he  lived 
in  Topeka.  It  was  not  the  place  or  oc 
casion  for  a  question  of  that  sort,  but  it 
did  not  suggest  to  the  Man  the  thing  it 
might  have  suggested,  and  he  answered 
her  kindly. 

"What  I  want  to  know,"  continued 
the  Girl,  "is,  could  an  honest  girl  get  a 


130  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

job  in  this  town  and  earn  her  living?  I 
want  to  cut  this  out.  I  can't  stand  it 
much  longer.  I  ran  away  from  my  home 
in  Michigan  last  spring  and  joined  a  com 
pany  that  played  the  town.  I  had  hung 
around  the  theater  and  met  two  or  three 
of  the  men,  and  I  was  crazy  about  the 
stage.  I  had  always  been  crazy  about 
it,  for  that  matter.  I  could  sing  pretty 
well  and  dance  a  little,  and  I  had  been 
in  a  good  many  amateur  entertainments. 
The  home  papers  always  praised  me  a 
good  deal,  and  it  spoiled  me  for  anything 
else. 

"Well,  I  joined  the  company  at  a  town 
twenty  miles  away,  and  to  this  day  my 
people  don't  know  what  became  of  me. 
The  company  kept  going  up  to  July  in  a 
hand-to-mouth  sort  of  way,  and  I  man 
aged  to  live,  but  it  was  awful.  During 
the  summer  I  got  an  occasional  engage 
ment  at  one  of  the  summer  theaters,  but 
there  were  a  lot  of  times  I  went  hungry. 
In  the  fall  I  caught  on  with  'Googly- 


The  Girl  in  ' '  Googly  -  Goo. "       131 

Goo,'  and  it  seems  to  me  we've  played  a 
thousand  one-night  stands  since. 

"I  get  $15  a  week.  My  board  never 
costs  less  than  $7  ;  sometimes  it  costs 
$10.  Laundry  bills  and  incidentals  eat 
up  most  of  the  balance.  I  can't  even 
dress  myself  comfortably  on  what  is  left. 
I  spend  my  time  between  a  cold,  cheer 
less  room  at  a  cheap  hotel,  the  day  coach 
on  the  train,  and  the  dirty  dressing- 
rooms  of  some  third-  or  fourth-class  the 
ater.  Between  times  I  am  cursed  and 
abused,  and  every  man  I  meet  seems  to 
regard  me  as  lawful  prey.  I've  stayed 
honest  and  decent,  but  I  can't  go  back 
home.  It's  a  little  town,  where  every 
body  knows  everybody's  business,  and 
the  gossip  about  me  would  drive  me  rnad. 
I  simply  can't  face  that,  and  I  can't  keep 
this  up.  I'd  rather  die  than  go  on." 

That's  all  there  is  to  the  story,  but 
there  should  be  a  lesson  here  for  the  girl 
who  is  stagestruck.  Incidentally,  it  may 
be  mentioned  that  the  "Googly-Goo" 


132  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

company  was  "shy"  one  chorus  girl  when 
it  went  on  to  Denver,  and  that  up  in  a 
little  Michigan  town  there  was  one  home 
where  Thanksgiving  Day  had  a  real  mean 
ing. 


A  PILGRIMAGE  INTO  THE  PAST. 

One  year  I  spent  my  two  weeks  off 
differently.  Mostly,  when  my  loafing  - 
spell  came  round  I  had  gone  main-trav 
eled  roads.  Sometimes  I  went  to  dawdle 
in  the  sand  at  the  shore.  Again,  I  cut 
deep  into  the  north-woods,  with  no 
thought  other  than  of  my  appetite  and 
my  fishing-tackle.  Sometimes  I  followed 
the  August  incursion  to  the  cities,  or  paid 
the  price  at  lakeside  or  mountain  resort. 

But  on  that  vacation — the  vacation  I 
spent  differently- — I  went  to  follow  for  a 
little  while  the  long  since  effaced  foot 
steps  of  a  Soldier  Boy  who  crossed  the 
river  at  Shiloh,  stood  in  the  thinned 
ranks  at  Stone  River,  double-quicked 
across  the  field  of  Missionary  Ridge,  and 
was  a  unit  in  the  straggling  blue  line  that 
planted  the  flag  on  Lookout. 

We  who  are  under  forty  are  callous  to 
the  Boy  in  Blue.  It  is  a  far  cry  back  to 

(133) 


134  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

Lookout  and  Shiloh  and  Stone  River. 
To  the  generation  born  in  the  forty  years 
since  the  pride  in  it  all  is  dimming,  the 
glory  of  it  all  is  fading.  I  had  grown 
indifferent  with  the  rest,  and  so  I  went 
down  to  Lookout  and  Shiloh  and  Mis 
sionary  Ridge  in  memory  of  the  Soldier 
Boy  who  carried  a  musket  through  it  all. 
The  birds  twittered  in  the  thickets,  the 
drowsy  lull  of  the  farm  was  about  me,  and 
the  soft  wind  of  a  September  afternoon 
fanned  my  cheek  as  I  sat  on  a  fallen  tree 
by  the  wayside  and  in  fancy  watched  the 
field  of  Shiloh  grow  red  with  blood  again. 
Standing  on  a  stone  on  the  brow  of  Look 
out  I  followed  the  fortunes  of  the  charge 
across  Missionary  Ridge,  and  heard  again 
the  rattle  of  musketry  and  the  clank  and 
clash  of  bayonets  in  the  fierce  conflict 
the  blue  and  the  gray  had  waged  two 
thousand  feet  beneath  my  seat.  And 
later  in  the  day  I  walked  up  and  down 
the  long,  serried  lines  of  headstones  on 
the  little  eminence  in  the  valley,  and 


A  Pilgrimage  into  the  Past.        135 

looked  out  upon  a  landscape,  peaceful 
and  quiet  now  and  blackened  by  the 
smoky  finger  of  commerce,  where  fifty 
thousand  men,  some  in  gray  and  some  in 
blue,  had  laid  down  their  lives  at  their 
country's  call. 

And  then  I  knew  why  these  things 
were  the  Soldier  Boy's  pride  and  glory, 
and  why  their  light  to  him  never  dimmed 
or  faded.  I  understood,  too,  his  last  ex 
pressed  wish  that  he  might  go  to  his  rest 
under  the  white  stone  in  the  little  country 
churchyard  with  the  flag  of  his  country 
wrapped  about  him.  I  hope  he  knows 
of  my  tardy  trip  across  the  present  and 
into  the  past.  I  hope  he  knows,  too, 
that  I  came  back  with  a  deeper  under 
standing  and  a  keener  appreciation  of  the 
faded  coat  of  blue  and  the  empty  sleeve 
swinging  in  the  wind. 


THE  TAKING  DOWN  OF  HESTON. 

This  is  a  little  story  describing  the  man 
ner  in  which  Heston  received  what  was 
corning  to  him.  It  is  not  a  thrilling 
story,  and  it  has  no  unusual  angles ;  but 
because  it  happens  to  be  true,  and  be 
cause  it  points  a  fine,  two-edged  moral, 
it  is  given  here. 

One  night  while  Heston  was  sojourning 
in  a  big  town  east  of  the  Mississippi  river, 
Fate  picked  up  the  deck  and  dealt  him  a 
Queen  of  Hearts.  There  wasn't  any 
game  going  on  at  the  time  and  the  deal 
was  a  little  irregular,  but  Heston  and  the 
Queen  made  up  their  minds  to  start  one 
just  to  play  the  cards  that  had  been  dealt. 
The  lady  picture-card  in  Heston 's  hand 
was  what  the  boys  call  a  good  looker. 
She  had  big  brown  eyes,  the  willowy  ef 
fect  in  form,  and  the  silken  petticoat 
rustle  in  her  garments.  Without  sub 
jecting  this  tale  to  unnecessary  elonga- 

(136) 


The  Taking  Down  of  Heston.      137 

tion  it  may  be  stated  that  the  game 
opened  that  night  was  never  closed  for 
three  years.  Sometimes  it  was  operated 
under  the  electric  lights,  sometimes  in 
the  shadows  of  the  front  porch,  and  once 
a  year  it  was  briefly  interrupted  to  be 
immediately  resumed  b}^  the  shifty  sands 
and  in  the  shade  of  the  woody  dells  of  the 
Northern  resorts. 

The  Queen  came  fully  up  to  her  ad 
vance  photographs.  She  was  wonder 
fully  clever,  sympathetic,  coy  enough  to 
satisfy  and  good  fellow  enough  to  please. 
It  was  plain  from  the  first  hand  that  she 
liked  Heston  immensely,  and  Heston  re 
ciprocated  by  falling  sincerely  in  love  with 
her.  Ahead  of  them  the  water  was  as 
smooth  as  glass,  and  there  was  a  spanking 
breeze  behind.  She  was  of  age,  her  folks 
liked  Heston  anyway,  and  her  girl  friends 
were  undisguised  in  their  admiration. 
They  got  along  perfectly,  never  quarreled, 
and  were  as  considerate  of  each  other  as 
chance  acquaintances  at  an  afternoon 


138  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

reception.  When  Heston  asked  her  to 
marry  him  she  didn't  ask  for  time  or  spar 
for  wind.  She  just  fell  over  into  his  arms. 
And  so  their  courtship  drifted  along  in 
idyllic  fashion  for  three  years.  The 
Queen  was  steadfastly  true,  and  Heston, 
considering  his  opportunities  for  being 
otherwise,  was  reasonably  square  and 
honest  with  her. 

But  about  this  time  the  thing  began  to 
cloy  a  little  on  Heston.  He  liked  a  fight 
ing  game,  and  this  one  had  been  so  easy 
that  it  failed  to  satisfy  his  savage  in 
stinct.  The  Queen  had  never  given  him 
any  reason  to  be  jealous.  Everything  he 
was  even  suspected  of  wanting  had  been 
handed  him  on  a  platter.  Nobody  had 
objected  to  him ;  nobody  had  knocked. 
A  pottering  scientist  couldn't  have  found 
an  obstacle  in  Heston's  way  with  the  aid 
of  a  microscope.  He  knew  that  when  it 
came  to  comparisons  he  was  dirt  under 
the  Queen's  feet.  But  things  had  shaped 
themselves  so  that  all  the  zest  of  the  chase 


The  Taking  Down  of  Heston.      139 

had  been  eliminated,  and  he  liked  best 
that  for  which  he  had  to  fight. 

Untoward  events  helped  widen  the 
chasm  Heston  was  digging  between  him 
self  and  Her  Gracious  Majesty.  He  had 
attended  to  his  employer's  business  so 
industriously  and  with  such  intelligent 
zeal  that  he  found  himself  out  of  a  job, 
and  came  West  to  look  for  a  new  one. 
With  the  new  job  he  found  new  faces, 
and  in  a  month  or  two  there  was  a  new 
photograph  on  his  dresser.  The  Queen 
wrote  frequent  bright,  gay  and  gossipy 
letters,  which  Heston  occasionally  read 
and  infrequently  replied  to  briefly.  Af 
ter  a  while  the  Queen,  who  was  smart, 
even  if  she  wasn't  many-sided  in  her 
knowledge  of  men,  saw  how  things  were 
going.  And  so  one  day  Heston  took  a 
package  out  of  the  postoffice  containing 
his  ring  and  a  dignified,  but  pathetic 
little  note  breaking  the  engagement. 

There  were  no  reproaches,  no  accusa 
tions.  The  note  was  even  jocular  in  a 


140  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

way.  But  beneath  its  surface  there  was 
visible  a  woman's  sorrow.  The  note 
bothered  Heston  a  little,  not  that  he 
cared  much  about  the  Queen.  He  was 
too  busy  with  some  Princesses  and  a  few 
Houris  and  Seraphs.  But  he  knew  he'd 
been  a  dog,  and  rather  regretted  it.  He 
wrote  the  Queen  a  nice  letter,  which  he 
didn't  at  all  feel,  and  the  incident  prac 
tically  closed.  Once  in  a  while  for 
months  after,  he  exchanged  letters  with 
her,  but  there  was  no  recurrence  of  the 
old  symptoms,  and  after  a  while  even  the 
occasional  letters  ceased. 

That  was  two  or  three  years  ago. 
Meanwhile  things  had  not  gone  so  well 
with  Heston.  He  had  his  troubles.  The 
game  broke  badly  for  him,  and  the  Prin 
cesses,  Houris  and  Seraphs  were  not  there 
with  the  comfort  and  sympathy.  So  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  that  his  heart 
turned  instinctively  to  the  Queen.  He 
remembered  her  wonderful  cleverness,  her 
never-failing  powers  of  entertainment, 


The  Taking  Down  of  He ston.      141 

and  above  all,  her  kindly  sympathy. 
And  in  time  his  desire  to  see  her  over 
came  his  scruples  as  to  what  her  own  at 
titude  in  the  matter  might  be.  He  had 
heard  nothing  from  her  for  a  couple  of 
years,  and  wasn't  even  sure  she  lived  at 
the  old  place.  But  without  telling  her 
anything  about  it,  he  took  a  layoff  and 
made  the  trip  East  to  see  her. 

The  maid  wrho  went  upstairs  said  the 
Queen  would  be  dowrn  in  a  minute.  Pres 
ently  she  came  rustling  into  the  recep 
tion  room,  her  face  aglow  and  a  smile 
of  welcome  in  her  eyes.  They  talked  a 
wrhile  in  the  old,  informal,  gossipy  way 
and  the  Queen  planned  a  little  dinner  for 
the  following  evening.  Her  frank  cor 
diality  and  apparent  pleasure  at  the  meet 
ing  disarmed  Heston  of  any  suspicion 
that  his  hand  might  be  worthless.  So 
he  invited  her  to  go  to  the  theater  that 
evening.  She  accepted,  and  as  Heston 
wasn't  sure  he  could  get  tickets  for  the 
performance  he  made  an  appointment  to 


142  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

come  back  in  an  hour  or  two  and  let 
her  know.  When  he  got  back  to  the 
house  the  reception  room  had  clouded  up 
and  was  beginning  to  rain.  There  was 
another  man,  and  the  man  was  cross  and 
discourteous.  The  Queen  tried  to  keep 
the  conversation  going,  but  things  grew 
so  chilly  that  Heston  left  after  telling  her 
he  had  secured  the  tickets. 

That  night  on  the  way  to  the  theater 
she  was  even  gayer  and  more  cordial  and 
friendly  than  she  had  been  in  the  after 
noon. 

"And  why,"  said  Heston,  "are  you  so 
extraordinarily  nice  to  me  tonight  ?  What 
have  I  done  to  deserve  these  selections 
from  the  conservatory? 

"Well,"  said  the  Queen,  and  there  was 
the  light  of  triumph  in  her  eye,  "I'm 
being  nice  to  you  because  I  do  not  expect 
to  see  you  again."  She  let  it  soak  in  for  a 
couple  of  blocks,  and  then  she  added:  "I 
am  going  to  marry  Mr.  Farrell  this  win 
ter." 


WHEN  A  MAN  IS  WORTHLESS. 

Generally  speaking,  when  a  man  is 
worthless  it  is  charged  up  to  whisky, 
poker,  cigarettes,  or  blondined  women. 
It  is  my  observation  that  the  front- 
parlor  habit  spoils  more  young  men  than 
all  four  other  vices  mentioned.  A  young 
man  with  girl  on  the  brain  is  more  thor 
oughly  worthless  than  the  young  man 
who  drinks.  The  girl  habit  takes  more 
time  than  poker  and  costs  more  money. 
Left  to  itself,  the  blondined  woman  vice 
is  its  own  cure.  But  once  the  front-par 
lor  habit  gets  its  hooks  into  a  man  he 
never  shakes  it  off  until  he  marries  or  is 
barred  by  age.  The  "girl  business" 
causes  him  to  neglect  his  work,  sends  his 
mind  "wool-gathering"  and  paralyzes  his 
usefulness. 

I  am  not  condemning  the  girl.  Every 
thing  in  this  world  worth  a  man's  best 
endeavor  has  a  woman  in  it.  Her  in- 

(143) 


144  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

fluence  for  good  cannot  be  overestimated. 
The  trouble  is  that  not  one  young  man  in 
ten  can  do  the  front-parlor  circuit  in 
moderation.  I  do  not  amount  to  any 
thing,  principally,  I  think,  because  I 
have  always  had  "girlitis."  For  fif 
teen  years  my  mind  has  been  on  the  front 
parlor  instead  of  on  my  work.  I  have 
drunk  whisky — in  moderation,  and  have  a 
passing  acquaintance  with  poker.  I  have 
had  a  working  knowledge  of  all  the  other 
vices.  But  none  of  them  ever  took  a 
job  away  from  me  or  prevented  promo 
tion  and  a  raise  in  salary  at  the  end  of  the 
year. 

I  never  pottered  over  my  work  during 
the  day  or  watched  the  clock  for  the  last 
hour  before  quitting-time  because  of  the 
booze  I  expected  to  drink  that  night  or 
the  poker  game  I  expected  to  sit  into. 
But  I  have  given  many  a  piece  of  impor 
tant  work  a  lick  and  a  promise — I've 
watched  the  minute-hand  crawl  over 
many  an  hour  made  weary  by  the  thought 


When  a  Man  is  Worthless.        145 

that  a  slim  young  thing  in  a  fluffy  gown 
was  waiting  in  the  front  parlor  for  me.  I 
never  expect  to  get  over  the  habit.  Truth 
to  tell,  I  don't  want  to.  The  rustle  of  a 
woman's  skirts  is  the  finest  music  I  know. 
But  reform  in  this  country  always  begins 
at  the  wrong  end.  The  reformers  should 
give  whisky  a  rest  and  tackle  "girlitis." 
That's  the  vice  we're  really  suffering 
from. 


ON  LICKING  NICK  HARTLEY. 

I  think  the  greatest  disappointment  of 
my  life  was  the  fact  that  I  was  never 
able  to  lick  Nick  Hartley.  I  had  plenty 
of  opportunities,  but  Nick  was  so  much 
bigger  and  stronger  than  I  that  I  was 
always  afraid  to  take  the  chance.  Nick 
was  a  fat,  husky  lad  with  a  bulldog  jaw, 
who  lived  in  the  Meeker  neighborhood. 
He  was  three  or  four  years  my  senior, 
and  I  don't  suppose  there  ever  was  a  time 
in  his  life  when  he  could  not  have  taken 
me  down  and  tied  me  hand  and  foot.  He 
used  to  keep  me  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
terror.  I  don't  remember  that  he  ever 
abused  me  specifically,  but  he  knew  I 
was  afraid  of  him  and  he  nagged  me  and 
bullied  me  whenever  he  had  a  chance. 

It  got  so  that  whenever  Nick  and  I 
were  coincident  at  a  "literary,"  spelling 
school,  or  other  neighborhood  entertain 
ment,  I  promptly  hid  out.     He  had  me 

(146) 


On  Licking  Nick  Hartley.         147 

completely  "buffaloed."  I  used  to  put 
in  hours  nursing  my  plan  of  revenge.  I 
figured  that  I  would,  in  course  of  time, 
catch  up  with  him  in  the  matter  of  phys 
ical  development,  and  when  that  time 
came  I  proposed  to  get  him  into  a  big 
crowd  and  punch  his  head  off.  I  had  the 
whole  thing  systematized,  even  to  the 
phraseology  in  which  I  expected  to  call 
him  to  an  accounting.  And  when  I  had 
worked  out  the  preliminary  plans  I  would 
sit  and  gloat  over  the  discomfiture  which 
would  possess  the  hated  Hartley  when  I 
should  lick  the  pea-green  stuffing  out  of 
him  and  walk  majestically  from  the  field 
leaving  him  to  the  pity  of  his  friends  and 
the  jeers  of  mine. 

But  I  never  caught  up  with  Nick.  He 
always  held  the  "edge"  on  me  in  the 
matter  of  muscle,  and  I  knew  intuitively 
that  I  should  get  well  thumped  if  I  tried 
for  revenge.  Finally  our  ways  separated 
and  I  lost  track  of  him,  but  my  failure 
to  put  the  "fixin's"  on  him  has  always 


148  At  the  Grass  Roots. 

been  a  source  of  keen  disappointment  to 
me.  I  have  an  idea  that  Nick  developed 
into  a  fair,  useful  and  industrious  citizen, 
and  that  he  is  now  a  respected  member 
of  his  community.  But  if  he  is  around 
anywhere  handy  I  wish  he'd  come  up 
some  day  and  let  me  take  two  or  three 
pokes  at  his  jaw.  I  couldn't  hurt  him 
much,  and  it  would  be  a  great  accommo 
dation  to  me. 


A     000718103     5 


